Iran launched missiles and drones at American military bases in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain on Wednesday, retaliating for US strikes on roughly 20 targets inside Iran and pushing the April ceasefire between Washington and Tehran closer to collapse. US officials said nearly all of the incoming weapons were intercepted and that no American casualties or damage to the bases had been reported.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it carried out drone attacks on the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and on the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait, and fired long-range missiles at an airbase near Azraq in Jordan. The IRGC claimed it had attacked 21 American targets and destroyed four of them, including a hangar housing F-35 fighter jets at the Jordanian base — claims that could not be independently verified and that US officials disputed.
Jordan's military said it intercepted and shot down five missiles, with falling shrapnel causing no injuries or material damage. A US official said Iran launched multiple missiles and drones at several American bases across the region, and that air defences downed nearly all of them.
The Iranian barrage came in response to American strikes launched on Tuesday evening against Iranian air-defence batteries, ground-control stations and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz, including targets on Qeshm Island and along Iran's southern ports. Washington said those strikes were retaliation for an Iranian drone that struck a US Army AH-64 Apache helicopter on Monday, sending it into the sea — a crash that ended with the crew being pulled from the water by an unmanned rescue vessel.
President Donald Trump celebrated the American strikes in posts on social media, calling Iran's military "a complete and total mess" and declaring that "the Bully of the Middle East is DEAD." He coupled the boasts with a renewed threat over the stalled nuclear and security negotiations: "They've taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them. Now they will have to pay the price."
The exchange is the most serious between the United States and Iran since the ceasefire took hold in April, and it lands days after Trump said a wider peace agreement was in its "final throes." Iran and Israel separately halted their own strikes on each other this week, but the diplomatic track between Washington and Tehran has repeatedly stalled over enrichment limits and Iranian demands tied to transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian officials signalled that the attacks were calibrated rather than open-ended. Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters on Wednesday that Tehran would need to reassess negotiations with the United States in light of the latest American strikes, while stopping short of declaring the talks dead.
Analysts said the speed of the Iranian response reflected an established doctrine. Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute noted that Tehran moves quickly to answer US strikes with proportionate force precisely to avoid letting unanswered attacks become "a new normal" — a pattern that has kept the conflict simmering without tipping into full-scale war.
The escalation rippled immediately through markets. Crude oil climbed toward $90 a barrel on Wednesday, and the surge in energy prices is now feeding directly into US inflation, which hit a three-year high of 4.2 percent in May. Gulf governments, whose territory has now absorbed Iranian fire twice in a week, condemned the strikes on their soil.
Whether the ceasefire survives may turn on what Washington does next. The White House gave no immediate indication of a further military response on Wednesday, and Trump's aides have continued to describe a negotiated settlement as the administration's preferred outcome — even as the president's own posts swing between peacemaking and threats.