US strikes IRGC radar and ports after tankers are hit at Hormuz

U.S. Central Command said American forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in Iran at 12 p.m. Eastern on 1 September. The command tied the raid to IRGC attempts against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against U.S. troops in the region. Iranian state media reported explosions on Qeshm Island, in the port city of Bandar Abbas and at Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman.

The Tuesday strikes ended a month of relative quiet and followed a weekend exchange that had already broken the lull. On Sunday U.S. aircraft hit rocket launchers and mine-laying units on Larak Island, a six-mile logistics hub that sits inside the strait. CENTCOM called that raid limited and precise. Capt. Tim Hawkins said the command had finished clearing mines from international lanes last week and would not allow Iran to put more down.

Iran answered Sunday's hits by firing missiles at two U.S. air bases in Jordan. Jordanian authorities said they intercepted eight. The IRGC later claimed a heavy ballistic attack on a Marine Corps base in Jordan and said it had killed a large number of U.S. forces. Washington has not confirmed casualties. The United Arab Emirates said it stopped an Iranian drone over its waters. Iran also claimed a strike on Al Minhad air base. Abu Dhabi dismissed that claim.

Monday added a commercial layer. Two tankers leaving the strait were reported hit. The Institute for the Study of War wrote that the 30 and 31 August attacks showed Iran could still reach ships using the southern exit route, the path captains take when they want to avoid waters Iran treats as its own. CENTCOM said Tuesday's targets included radars that Iran uses to find those ships. President Trump told Fox News the United States had struck radars Tehran was trying to rebuild.

Oil moved with the shots. Prices had already risen after the weekend fire and the tanker reports. On Tuesday they jumped more than $4 a barrel and settled at a five-week high. Iran has effectively closed the strait to routine traffic for months. About a third of seaborne crude used to pass that gap. The six-month war had drifted into an economic standoff before Sunday. The new raids pull it back toward open exchange.

Trump spent Monday holding two lines at once. He warned that Washington would hit Iran hard. He also told reporters the weekend fire did not mean a return to full-scale war. A senior Iranian official told Reuters the same thing in different words: a limited and contained confrontation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said new sanctions were coming. Trump called Iran a failed nation, cited 300 percent inflation and said its leaders should face war-crimes trials. He has used that register before. It does not by itself decide the target list.

Local officials in Iran said one U.S. strike hit a house hosting a wedding, killing two people and wounding dozens. That account has not been independently verified in full. It is the kind of civilian report that will sit on the next CENTCOM briefing whether the command addresses it or not.

The war is in its seventh month. Hormuz remains the prize and the pressure point. India has already rerouted cooking-gas cargoes to the United States after Gulf LPG dried up. Asian refiners are paying the spread. The question Tuesday night was whether radar wreckage and a $4 move in crude are the ceiling, or the first hours of another cycle. Trump said he did not want a wider war. The aircraft still flew at noon Eastern.