Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on July 13 it had struck American military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait, destroyed radar systems in Oman, and hit fuel tanks and ammunition depots at Prince Hassan air base in Jordan, according to state media cited by RTE. Jordan said it intercepted and downed four missiles fired from Iranian territory, while Kuwait's military reported it was engaging "hostile aerial targets" in its airspace, per the Guardian's live coverage.

The barrage followed overnight US strikes that CENTCOM said hit at least 140 targets across Iran, including air defence systems, radar sites, missile and drone equipment, and small boats. The US said the operation was triggered when the IRGC fired on a Cyprus-registered container ship it accused of sailing an "unauthorised route" through the Strait of Hormuz; the IRGC separately claimed it hit a second vessel for "violating regulations." In response, Iran announced the closure of the strait until further notice — a threat Tehran has made before but one that now carries the weight of an active shooting war rather than posturing.

CENTCOM rejected any Iranian claim to control the waterway. "The Strait of Hormuz is a vital maritime corridor for global trade. Iran does not control it," the command said, according to the Guardian's live blog. The IRGC dismissed the statement outright, calling the strait "our territory." Donald Trump said US forces were keeping the strait open by force. The US-run Joint Maritime Information Center reported that commercial traffic through the corridor — which carries roughly a fifth of global oil and LNG flows on a normal day — was moving at "reduced levels," a description that stops short of confirming closure but signals disruption serious enough to alter shipping and insurance calculus in real time.

This week's exchange is not an isolated flare-up. It is the latest in a sequence of tit-for-tat rounds that CENTCOM itself has been documenting in near-weekly press releases: "New Round of Retaliatory Strikes" on July 7, "Another Round of Strikes" on July 8, and "Latest Round of Strikes" on July 11. Reuters reported that Iran carried out a second consecutive day of attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain on July 8, both hosts to significant US basing infrastructure, after the US resumed strikes following earlier attacks near Hormuz. AP News had already documented drone and missile attacks on the same two states on June 28, in response to a prior wave of American airstrikes, noting the exchanges were further imperiling what had been an interim deal.

The pattern of retaliation has widened geographically rather than narrowed. Iran claimed strikes on US sites in Qatar around July 9, the same period in which Tehran was preparing to bury Supreme Leader Khamenei, who was killed in a US strike on February 28 at the outset of the war, per Reuters. Kuwait has borne some of the heaviest civilian cost among the Gulf states: an Iranian attack on Kuwait International Airport around June 3 killed one person and injured more than 60, according to Kuwaiti authorities, and on July 9 Kuwait's military said it shot down three ballistic missiles, a cruise missile, and 10 drones, with falling debris wounding one person, per AP News. Kuwait's Defense Ministry had already acknowledged Iranian strikes on its territory on July 8.

The legal framing underpinning US operations dates back further. The State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser laid out its position in an April release titled "Operation Epic Fury and International Law," which addressed Iranian attacks on US personnel and facilities alongside what Washington characterizes as Iran's illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs. That document, along with the joint US-GCC statement issued after a June 25 ministerial meeting in Manama and a CENTCOM-led Regional Security Dialogue with 12 nations in Bahrain on July 1, points to a Washington effort to lock in Gulf-state alignment well before this month's exchanges — diplomatic scaffolding that has not stopped the fighting from spreading to the territory of the very partners it was meant to reassure.

What distinguishes the current phase from earlier rounds is the simultaneity and geographic spread of Iranian retaliation — Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Oman all named in a single 24-hour cycle, with Qatar drawn in earlier this month. For host governments in Manama, Kuwait City, and Amman, the calculus is increasingly uncomfortable: each hosts American forces under long-standing security arrangements, yet each is now absorbing direct fire for that hosting role without being party to the underlying US-Iran confrontation. Whether the Strait of Hormuz closure announcement translates into a sustained interdiction effort, or remains largely rhetorical amid US assurances of freedom of navigation, will likely determine how quickly oil markets and shipping insurers reprice the risk — and how much further the war's geography stretches before either side seeks an off-ramp.