The United States and Iran traded attacks through the Strait of Hormuz for a third consecutive night, with Iranian missiles and drones striking two UAE-flagged tankers in the waterway, Bahrain, and a U.S. air base in Jordan. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it hit U.S. military assets in Kuwait and Bahrain in retaliation, killing one mariner in the tanker strike and wounding at least ten others. President Donald Trump told reporters the U.S. would charge ships a 20% toll on cargo transiting the strait and that Gulf states should pay for “protection,” while the U.S. Navy reinstates a blockade of Iranian ports from Tuesday. Brent crude rose above $86 a barrel, the highest in a month and still well below the $120 Brent reached at the end of April.
Overnight Strikes Hit Southern Iran
The U.S. military said its five-hour overnight mission hit targets in Bushehr, Chah Bahar, Jask, Konarak, Abu Musa, and Bandar Abbas. U.S. Central Command posted on social media Monday evening that one-way attack surface drones hit the submarine and ship maintenance facility at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, the first time American forces had used sea drones in combat. “Last night’s strikes degraded Iran’s ability to continue attacking commercial shipping,” the command said. Trump told host Hugh Hewitt on The Hugh Hewitt Show that the U.S. would hit Iran “very hard tonight, and we’re going to hit them hard tomorrow. And there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”
Iran’s oil minister, Mohsen Paknejad, said Iran’s oil exports were continuing as usual. Iranian state media reported strikes in Bandar Abbas, on Kish and Qeshm islands, and in the southwestern city of Omidiyeh, where four people were wounded. The IRGC separately claimed missile and drone strikes on U.S. military assets in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Fars news agency, citing local sources, said an attack in Hormozgan province killed three, including a family of environmentalists. State-run IRNA said four locations were hit by projectiles in the city of Bushehr. Fars reported residents had heard multiple explosions in those areas. Mehr reported explosions on Qeshm and Kish islands.
Where the Damage Landed Across the Gulf
| Location | Attack reported | Reported impact |
|---|---|---|
| Strait of Hormuz (UAE flag) | Two cruise missiles at tankers Mombasa and Al Bahiyah | One Indian mariner killed; other crew wounded; fires set then extinguished |
| Bahrain | Missile and drone attacks | Sirens sounded three times; explosions in Manama; British resident reported glass breaking in flats |
| Jordan | Ballistic missiles entered airspace | Air defenses shot down four missiles; no casualties reported |
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said the tankers Mombasa and Al Bahiyah had “ignored repeated warnings” and “chose to pass through a minefield and were subsequently targeted and disabled.” The UAE Defense Ministry initially put the toll at one mariner killed and eight wounded, one Indian killed and six Indians and two Ukrainians injured. India’s foreign ministry, in a wider count issued Tuesday, said one Indian was killed and ten crew across both ships were injured, including two seriously. India summoned Iran’s deputy ambassador to lodge what New Delhi called “a strong protest against these attacks.”
The UAE Defense Ministry statement carried a warning: “The UAE reserves its full right to respond to this escalation and to take all necessary measures to protect its territory, its citizens and residents,” language the Emirates had used before launching attacks on Iran during the war. Fighter jets were heard over Dubai on Tuesday morning. Iran’s missiles and drones on Tuesday morning also hit targets in Bahrain, and ballistic missiles reached Jordanian airspace.
In Bahrain, a British expatriate told the BBC he had been hit by “five huge explosions,” with glass from a window blowing out and “flying glass cut my leg.” Most Iranian munitions had been intercepted by Bahraini air defenses, he said, but residential blocks had taken blast and debris damage. Jordan’s armed forces said they intercepted and shot down four missiles that entered Jordanian airspace from Iranian territory, with state news agency reporting no casualties on the ground. The IRGC’s statement, carried by Fars News, called on Jordanians to “dismantle American bases in the kingdom.” The Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of all traded crude oil and natural gas once passed in peacetime, was the prize the U.S. blockade was meant to lock down.
Iran’s IRGC released no casualty figures of its own for the day’s strikes. India’s Ministry of External Affairs summoned Iran’s deputy ambassador and said it “strongly condemns these attacks and acts of violence targeting seafarers and disrupting free and safe navigation through international waterways like the Strait of Hormuz.” The attacks hit Bahrain, the UAE, and Jordan in a single morning, hours after Iran’s declaration that the waterway was closed “until further notice.”
Trump Demands Reimbursement From the Gulf States
Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said the U.S. would charge ships a 20 percent toll on cargo transiting the strait. Until recently, his administration had held that the waterway should remain open to all without tolls, as it was before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. He framed the demand as payment for U.S. protection of the Gulf, in remarks that upended decades of American policy on freedom of navigation. The Associated Press, citing regional analysts, said any attempt by the U.S. or Iran to charge fees would violate global norms. Trump singled out Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait as the customers he expected to reimburse Washington.
I want to be reimbursed because we’re protecting a very rich portion of the world. We’re spending money, so we are going to be reimbursed for protection.
Trump, who made the remarks in the Oval Office on Monday, took the demand a step further by singling out monarchies the U.S. had long protected as the customers he expected to pay. Many of those countries had privately faulted the U.S. for launching the war without coordinating with them and without a plan for what to do when Iran closed the strait. By Tuesday, those same monarchies sat at the receiving end of Iran’s retaliation.
Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20% is of course too much. We will be fair.
Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, posted the remarks on social media on Monday, claiming Iran as the strait’s rightful “GUARDIAN” in a post that drew on Trump’s own framing of U.S. protection of the waterway. The post mocked Trump’s percentage while offering Iran’s own fee in exchange, the BBC reported. Araghchi’s “we will be fair” line came the day before Iran’s IRGC struck the UAE tankers through the same waterway.
The Cost in the Oil Market and at Sea
Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose as much as 3.8 percent on Tuesday to $85.92 a barrel at 8:00 GMT, then climbed further to $86.07 a barrel later in the morning, the highest since June 15, after Brent crude above $85 a barrel in Asian trading. The price has jumped 19 percent since the U.S. and Iran signed their interim memorandum of understanding last month. June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities in Singapore, told Al Jazeera crude was “fast losing its strategic petroleum reserve buffer, and a violent repricing up cannot be discounted.”
Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, said a move to $100 a barrel “is quite possible, should it become apparent that physical shortage risks are real and increasingly likely.” Ship traffic through the strait has collapsed in parallel, with 57 transits recorded Friday through Sunday, a more than 50 percent drop compared with the previous week, according to ship-tracking platform MarineTraffic. Roughly 130 vessels transited the strait daily before the U.S. and Israel launched their initial strikes on Iran in late February. Rory Johnston, founder of oil market research firm Commodity Context, told Al Jazeera traffic was grinding to a halt, “back to or even below our immediate pre-MoU pace,” a reference to an earlier closure by Iran that triggered Gulf-state counter-strikes.
Separately, the tanker Stolt Magnesium was struck by “an unidentified external device” off the coast of Oman on Monday, the operator said, with a fire in the engine room and no injuries. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations received a report describing a tanker hit by “an unknown projectile” off Qalhat. The IRGC had framed the UAE tanker strikes as retaliation for the Mombasa and Al Bahiyah “ignoring repeated warnings,” the same justification it had used in earlier strikes this month.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs summoned Iran’s deputy ambassador on Tuesday, registering New Delhi’s strongest public objection yet. “We strongly condemn these attacks and acts of violence targeting seafarers and disrupting free and safe navigation through international waterways like the Strait of Hormuz,” the ministry said. India put the crew toll at one Indian killed and ten wounded across both UAE-flagged tankers, including two seriously injured.
The Deal That Slipped Through Its Own Gaps
Tuesday’s exchange of strikes grew out of the collapse of the previous US-Iran ceasefire, an interim deal the U.S. and Iran had signed on June 17 as a 14-point agreement covering safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, an extension to the ceasefire, and an end to a naval blockade. Trump declared the ceasefire “over” on July 8 and called Iranian leaders “scum” and “cuckoo.” On Hugh Hewitt’s show Monday he framed the agreement as a “test” Iran had failed. The week’s developments set the stage for Trump’s reimposed blockade, due to take effect Tuesday at 4 p.m. EDT.
- June 17: U.S. and Iran sign 14-point agreement extending ceasefire and ending blockade.
- June 26: U.S. strikes resume after Trump accuses Iran of a “foolish violation” of the truce following a cargo ship attack in the Strait of Hormuz.
- July 7: U.S. launches roughly 80 strikes; Iran targets U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait.
- July 8: Trump declares ceasefire “over,” calls Iranian leaders “scum” and “cuckoo.”
- July 11: CENTCOM says U.S. forces struck 300-plus targets over three nights to degrade Iran’s ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial vessels.
- July 12: New wave of U.S. strikes; Iran retaliates against U.S. bases across the region.
- July 13: Trump says blockade will resume at 4 p.m. EDT on July 14; proposes 20 percent cargo toll.
- July 14: U.S. strikes for third consecutive night; Iran hits UAE tankers, Bahrain, and Jordan.
“They didn’t honor the test,” Trump told Hewitt. Tehran’s mirror accusation was that the memorandum, in Iran’s reading, acknowledged Iranian control over the strait and legitimized Iran’s right to set the rules of transit. BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet reported that “both sides can find what they like in its imprecise language,” a flaw visible from the document’s June signing. Iran’s parliament had followed up the collapse with a “Strategic Action” plan to manage the waterway, the BBC reported. Hardliners in Iran’s national security committee wrote that they “remain steadfast in defending our red lines,” in a Telegram post flagged by BBC reporting.
Until the original war the strait had been open to all shipping without tolls, the U.S. policy on which the new 20 percent fee reverses. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both countries Trump named as customers, had privately faulted the U.S. for launching the war without coordinating with them. India’s Ministry of External Affairs, in its Tuesday statement, called free navigation through the strait a right that international law would not surrender.
Pickaxe Mountain Is the Next Front Line
Trump said Monday the U.S. would “probably give Pickaxe a shot relatively soon.” Pickaxe Mountain, also known as Mt. Kolang Gaz-La, is a tunneled complex about a mile south of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility, according to the Institute’s analysis of the Pickaxe Mountain site. “Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice big fat shot right near the front door,” Trump told Hewitt, adding, “We see no activity there.”
According to the Institute for Science and International Security, there has been persistent activity at Pickaxe since April, when a ceasefire was declared in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, and the think tank argues any work there violates the memorandum of understanding signed by Washington and Tehran. The Hill, reporting on Trump’s Hugh Hewitt interview on Pickaxe Mountain threats, said experts have assessed that the facility’s depth puts America’s most powerful bunker-buster bombs out of reach. The site is buried up to 2,000 feet below granite and is suspected of housing uranium enrichment capability and stockpiles. The BBC quoted weapons analyst Chris Partridge noting that the tanker strikes, after heavy U.S. bombing earlier in the year, “again demonstrate Tehran’s ability to launch strikes.”
