Iran's latest warning to Washington came with a deadline attached. Hours after the US military said it had carried out a "heavy wave of strikes" on dozens of Iranian targets overnight, Iran's Revolutionary Guard vowed that "the aggressor will be punished today," signaling more retaliation could soon be on the way, reports NBC News. US Central Command said that the US launched strikes over a span of two hours on "military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities."
American officials say the new strikes were meant as a "powerful response" to Iranian aggression, per the Washington Post. The US strikes followed what officials called an "attempted surprise attack" on American forces in the region, per NBC. More players are now involved: Jordan said it intercepted a new Iranian barrage, Kuwait reported a deadly hit on a Chinese company's site, and Egypt said a drone ignited fires on two gas vessels in the port city of Damietta.
With key attacks near the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea trade routes, crude oil prices jumped toward $90 a barrel as concern over energy supplies and regional escalation deepened, with the war "threatening to grow bigger at the very moment the United States wants to move past it," notes the New York Times. "When Trump started the war, he thought he could control it," says Johns Hopkins international studies professor Vali Nasr. "The Iranian response is to extend the battlefield much, much wider, so the United States has to defend a broader battlefield." Meanwhile, a new poll indicates that most Americans don't think this is a war that's been worth fighting, per the AP.
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