US Reports Another Military Death, Warns Americans Abroad

American and Iranian forces traded deadlier blows Sunday, and the US confirmed its 17th military death in the escalating confrontation. The latest fatality occurred Saturday in northern Iraq during an attempt to safely detonate unexploded ordnance from an Iranian attack drone, US Central Command said, the day after a missile strike in Jordan killed two US soldiers and left a third missing. And the last vestiges of the broadly outlined deal aimed at ending the conflict appeared to be collapsing, the New York Times reports. The State Department is warning Americans abroad of the risk of sudden escalation.

• Strikes and counterstrikes: Iran fired missiles toward Jordan, per the AP, that risked widening the conflict into neighboring Israel. The US has hit Iranian coastal surveillance, air defense positions, and Revolutionary Guard units that it says were behind the Jordan attack, as well as bridges, water desalination plants, and electrical installations. Iran has answered with strikes on, in addition to Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, targeting sites that include oil, power, and water facilities, Kuwaiti authorities say. Jordan temporarily shut the airport and seaport in Aqaba after what the US Embassy called a specific, credible threat, and said it intercepted three Iranian missiles while a fourth landed in a sparsely populated area. American officials said they're sending more warplanes to the region.

• Oil profits: Should full, open warfare break out, Iran will have more money to fund its military. The government raked in billions of dollars while shipping oil out of the country after signing a framework for talks with the US in June. That agreement had two concessions from the US, per the Times: a lifting of the US naval blockade and an exemption to sanctions on Iranian oil sales. The blockade was reinstalled last week.
• Trump's reaction: President Trump called the deaths of the US service members "a very sad thing," per the Hill. "We hate to see it happen. They were in service of our country."