US Strikes Iran a Fourth Time as Iran Hits Bases Across the Gulf
American forces launched a fourth wave of strikes on Iran, using sea-launched attack drones for the first time and hitting dozens more targets — taking the week’s tally past 300, according to US Central Command. Iran retaliated with drones and missiles against US-linked sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, and again declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. Thousands have been killed since the war began in February, and the exchange now reaches across the Gulf monarchies that host Western forces.
The introduction of one-way attack drones launched from the sea is a marker of how the campaign is widening in method as well as geography, letting the US strike from new vectors while Iran spreads its reprisals across the peninsula. Each side frames its actions as forced by the other: Washington says it is degrading Iran’s ability to threaten shipping, Tehran that it is answering aggression on its soil, and both use the toll of the week — more than 300 American strikes, a widening list of hit Gulf sites — as evidence. The danger in the pattern is a single miscalculation: a strike that kills American personnel, or an Iranian missile that lands badly in a Gulf capital, either of which could tip a managed escalation into open regional war. Watch for confirmed casualties at the Gulf bases, whether any Western troops are hit, and whether the fourth wave is answered by a fifth.