DUBAI – The United States military reported its first combat fatalities from Iranian fire since the conflict’s start, confirming two service members killed and one missing after an assault on a Jordanian base. The attack, carried out Friday with drones and missiles, also resulted in four additional personnel being hospitalized. Those killed have not been identified. Overall, the war has now claimed 16 American lives and left more than 430 service members wounded.
Minutes before the casualty announcement, Iran’s supreme leader cautioned that continued U.S. attacks would bring “unforgettable lessons.” The warning, broadcast on state television, was credited to Mojtaba Khamenei, who has remained out of public view since the war’s onset. Khamenei also dismissed President Donald Trump’s signature as “worthless and invalid.” Meanwhile, an Iranian negotiator declared that Tehran would no longer honor the interim agreement reached roughly a month earlier to bring the conflict to a permanent end. These moves have further destabilized an already fragile diplomatic landscape, with Khamenei now threatening reprisals not only from Iran but also from its regional proxies, whom he referred to as the “Axis of Resistance.”
The struggle has increasingly centered on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that historically carried one‑fifth of the world’s crude oil. Escalating strikes are threatening civilian populations and critical infrastructure, including desalination facilities that supply drinking water, while the global economy once again faces heightened uncertainty.
U.S. Secretary of Defense claimed that Iran had breached its obligations under the accord, prompting Tehran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, to announce that Iran would cease compliance, according to state television.
There was no new word on mediation efforts.
US troops confront escalating dangers
The previous recorded death of a U.S. service member was that of a helicopter pilot who crashed in the Arabian Sea earlier this month. Early in the war, an Iranian drone strike on a command center in Kuwait killed six soldiers. One soldier died after an attack on a base in Saudi Arabia. Six were killed when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq.
On Saturday, the most significant damage from Iranian strikes occurred in Kuwait, where a water desalination plant and an oil facility were hit, according to Kuwaiti authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Both declined to provide locations.
The strikes injured several people at the oil facility and caused a fire at the desalination plant, forcing several power generation units offline. It was the second attack against a desalination plant in two days in the tiny desert nation that depends on desalination for 90 percent of its drinking water.
Several firefighters and a worker were injured while battling two other blazes sparked by Iranian strikes, according to the Kuwait Fire Force. Kuwait briefly closed its airspace due to missile threats, and Kuwait Airways said it was rescheduling most flights to and from the capital.
Meanwhile, Iraq said it shot down attack drones over the city of Irbil. Jordan’s state‑run Petra news agency reported that the kingdom’s air‑defence systems had downed Iranian missiles, while air sirens sounded multiple times in Bahrain throughout the day and in Saudi Arabia in the morning, according to their governments.
The secretary‑general of the six‑nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Mohamed Al‑Budaiwi, accused Iran of war crimes for strikes on infrastructure and civilian facilities.
US strikes hit infrastructure in Iran
The U.S. Central Command said early Saturday that its seventh straight night of strikes hit “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.”
U.S. airstrikes hit an electricity and desalination plant in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, Iranian state television reported. State‑run news agency IRNA said the Bonji desalination plant was destroyed, cutting off water supplies to about 10,000 people, and a desalination plant on strategic Qeshm Island inside the strait was damaged.
Overnight strikes damaged two tunnels and a bridge, disrupting a main highway toward Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port that sits near the narrowest part of the strait, according to IRNA. It said three bridges were hit Saturday, including one on a route to Bandar Abbas.
Iran acknowledged “attacks on power infrastructure” during the U.S. airstrikes for the first time Friday when its Energy Ministry urged people to use less power in southern provinces “experiencing extreme heat.” It did not specify what was hit.
Iranian authorities said at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes in the past three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday.
Iran and US vie for Strait of Hormuz
Iran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic after the war started with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28. That sent the price of oil soaring and has given Tehran significant leverage in negotiations.
Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should pay fees to Tehran, even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway. Iran fired on ships on recent days and transits fell to a three‑week low, according to an international shipping tracker.
President Trump has resumed threats to target Iran’s power stations and bridges to try to compel Tehran to loosen its hold. The U.S. in the past week reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.
A growing amount of the region’s energy is being sent through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping.
Before the war began, the U.S. had been in talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump now faces political pressure to end the war and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against.
