US and Iranian forces exchanged heavy missile and drone fire over the weekend into Monday, July 13, 2026, after Iran declared it was denying passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz The Guardian. CENTCOM said its forces struck Iranian air defence systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone capabilities, and small boats on Sunday using aircraft, naval vessels and drones, and announced Monday that its latest wave of strikes had concluded AP. The US military maintained that Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz, a direct rebuttal of Tehran's closure declaration.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they targeted US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait, destroyed radar systems in Oman, and struck fuel tanks and ammunition depots at Jordan's Prince Hassan airbase, framing the strikes as retaliation for the US campaign The Guardian. Kuwait's defence ministry said Iran hit three border posts and an offshore oil platform at Abdali on its northern frontier. The UAE said its air defences engaged Iranian missiles and drones on July 12-13. Qatar came under attack for the first time since April, ending a months-long lull for Doha. Explosions were reported Monday morning on Qeshm Island and in Bandar Abbas, both on Iran's southern coast facing the strait.

The exchanges mark an acceleration of a campaign that has moved through at least four distinct waves of US strikes in under three weeks. CENTCOM says it struck Iran in response to the June 25 attack on the commercial vessel M/V Ever Lovely, hitting missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar CENTCOM. A broader retaliatory round followed on July 7, after Iran attacked three commercial vessels; CENTCOM says it hit roughly 80 targets with precision munitions CENTCOM, and a further round on July 7-8 expanded that count to about 90 Iranian military targets CENTCOM. A third wave, launched July 11 after Iran struck a container ship in the strait, hit approximately 140 Iranian targets using land- and sea-based fighter aircraft and drones CENTCOM The Hill. A fourth wave, involving aircraft and cruise missiles, was completed shortly after CENTCOM.

Speaking on Fox News, Donald Trump said the US would "probably" take over the Strait of Hormuz and should be reimbursed for controlling it The Guardian. The remark lands against a legal backdrop few outside the region track closely: an agreement reached earlier this year had tasked Iran with de-mining the strait and guaranteeing safe navigation, with ships transiting free of charge for the first 60 days Al Jazeera. That arrangement has now effectively collapsed alongside the ceasefire it was meant to underpin.

Iran's top negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, posted on social media Sunday that "the era of one-sided deals is OVER," warning counterparts to "keep your word or pay the price" The Guardian. The line reads as a rejection of the terms Tehran accepted when the interim ceasefire was struck, and as a signal that Iran views the current strait closure as leverage rather than a negotiating position it intends to abandon quickly.

The current war traces to February 2026, when Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes. The Pentagon's own account of the campaign's opening phase — the June 2025 strike on the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant using 30,000-pound GBU-57 "massive ordnance penetrator" bombs, part of what the Department of Defense called Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER — predates Khamenei's death by nearly a year, and the 2026 National Defense Strategy cites that operation as evidence Trump would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons Defense.gov DoD Strategy Document. Thousands have been killed since February, mainly in Iran and Lebanon.

Brent crude rose more than 3% on Monday as markets priced in the risk to Gulf shipping. Roughly a fifth of global oil consumption transits the strait on a normal day, and Iran's closure declaration — even if the US insists it cannot enforce one — has been enough to move futures. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said a return to full-scale hostilities would carry catastrophic consequences, a warning consistent with earlier UN statements on the conflict but issued as the ceasefire framework that briefly held the fighting in check has now nearly collapsed entirely.

What distinguishes this phase from earlier rounds is less the tonnage of ordnance than the geographic spread: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan and Qatar have all reported attacks or intercepted projectiles within a 48-hour window, pulling the entire US basing architecture in the Gulf into the target set simultaneously. Trump's suggestion of a US "takeover" of the strait, paired with a demand for reimbursement, points toward an American ambition that goes beyond deterrence and toward a permanent claim on the chokepoint's governance — a posture regional states, several of them US treaty partners now absorbing Iranian fire on their own soil, have not yet publicly endorsed.