Middle East tense amid fresh strikes

The situation in the Middle East remained tense on Thursday as the United States and Iran traded intensifying strikes for the second consecutive day, resulting in a trail of casualties even as Qatar issued security alerts and warning sirens went off in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan.

The Iranian Ministry of Health said the US forces attacked five provinces in the country over the past two days, killing 14 people and wounding 78. Hossein Kermanpour, spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Health, said 47 of the 78 wounded remain hospitalized.

A projectile struck the perimeter of Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on Thursday, Ehsan Jahanian, deputy governor of Bushehr province, told state media.

Explosions were heard in coastal areas of Iran's port city of Bandar Abbas on Thursday afternoon, Iranian media reported.

 Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that major US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain were hit in retaliatory missile and drone operations.

The IRGC said in a statement that following the US' breach of commitments and its latest aggression against Iran, four US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain were hit in the first phase of its response, Tasnim News Agency reported.

The IRGC statement blamed the US for violating all the commitments it made in the memorandum of understanding Tehran signed with Washington last month.

"In the first phase of the punitive response against (the US), the IRGC's naval and aerospace forces, through joint missile and drone operations, destroyed the infrastructure and important facilities of the two colonial bases of the American occupiers in Arifjan and Ali al-Salem in Kuwait and in Juffair and Sheikh Isa in Bahrain, one hour after the enemy's attacks on various parts of (Iran)," the IRGC was quoted as saying by Tasnim.

The IRGC warned the US army that if the aggression was repeated, the Iranian response would be expanded to other US bases in the region.

Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a post on X that the US still had not learned that "bullying and breaking promises are no longer cost-free".

"Let me put it plainly: if you strike, you'll get hit. Don't flail around pointlessly, or you'll sink even deeper: the Strait of Hormuz will only open with 'Iranian arrangements', not American threats," Ghalibaf said.

Earlier, Bahrain's Ministry of Interior activated its alarm sirens and urged its citizens to remain calm and head to the nearest safe locations. Kuwaiti air defenses reported repelling missile and drone attacks while the Kuwait Army General Staff urged the public to keep away from suspicious wreckage. Jordan's air defense systems shot down eight missiles launched from Iran toward Jordanian territory on Thursday, a military source said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani held a phone call on Thursday, in which they reviewed the military escalation between the US and Iran over the past two days.

Al Thani condemned and rejected the attacks targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz "despite the atmosphere of de-escalation and the efforts being made to reduce tensions in the region", emphasizing that such actions undermine trust, threaten international navigation security, and harm the efforts aimed at establishing regional security and stability, according to a statement published by the Foreign Ministry of Qatar.

Data from Kpler, a global data and analytics company that tracks maritime trade in real time, said the Hormuz recovery faces fresh pressure.

"Traffic through the monitored Strait of Hormuz zone strengthened on July 7, with 41 verified crossings compared with 36 the previous day," it said in a post on X on Wednesday.

An Al Jazeera report noted that movement in the crucial waterway is now largely confined to a northern route approved by Iran, while a corridor further south backed by Oman and the US saw little activity.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Iran "wants to make a deal so badly" and had reached out to him to pursue negotiations after repeated US strikes in the region.

The US Central Command said its forces completed an additional round of strikes against Iran on Wednesday "to further degrade Iran's ability to attack commercial shipping and innocent civilian mariners in the Strait of Hormuz".

"US forces struck approximately 90 Iranian military targets including air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities and military logistics infrastructure along Iran's coastline. The latest strikes follow successful execution of offensive strikes in Iran the night before," it said.

Contact the writers at jan@chinadailyapac.com