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Nearly ۱۰۰ US service members have been injured over the last two weeks of escalating strikes on Iran, the Pentagon has said, as Tehran launched a wave of reprisals to the tenth consecutive night of attacks.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday they had targeted US military sites including air defence systems and a radar installation in Bahrain and Kuwait, while a tanker in the strait of Hormuz reported being struck by an unknown projectile, forcing its crew to abandon the vessel and board a lifeboat.
Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan all said they had activated defences to repel the attacks, but the scale of US injuries at facilities across the region over recent week is likely to bring greater scrutiny to Iran’s reprisal attacks.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the vast majority of those injured only experienced “minor concussions” and ۹۶% had since returned to work. Parnell was responding to a New York Times report that the Pentagon has withheld information about troop injuries from Iranian strikes. He denied that the Pentagon was hiding data about injuries.
In the last week three US soldiers have been killed in action in Jordan and Iraq.
The ۱۰ consecutive nights of US airstrikes haven’t compelled Tehran to loosen its grip on the strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of all crude oil and natural gas traded once passed in peacetime. Efforts to rein in the costs that the disruption is having on global trade and oil prices were complicated further on Monday, after Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis announced they were imposing a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia.
There were few details on how the embargo might work, but a Houthi official said that the Bab al-Mandeb strait – at the southern end of the Red Sea through which about ۱۲% of the world’s trade usually passes – would be closed to the Saudis in response to the kingdom’s “unjust blockade on Yemenis for over ۱۰ years”.
The Houthis have demonstrated their ability to disrupt shipping in the past by targeting vessels over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Saudi Arabia’s military said it would keep the waterway open, but the threat will put further pressure on the country’s oil exports, as it has increased shipping from Red Sea ports sue to the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Even as the US and Iran inch closer to all-out war again, Iran’s interior minister travelled to Pakistan, a key mediator in the conflict, for talks. However, it remains unclear just what new deal could be reached, after the interim deal signed last month that was meant to end the fighting crumbled.
Shipping through the strait of Hormuz has largely stalled. And as fighting intensifies, both sides have targeted civilian infrastructure relied on by millions of people.
The escalation has pushed oil prices higher in recent weeks. Benchmark Brent crude traded on Tuesday above $۸۸ a barrel and regular petrol in the US climbed to an average of $۴ a gallon, keeping pressure on Americans’ wallets ahead of midterm elections this November.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) said it had received multiple reports on Tuesday that a tanker had been hit by an unknown projectile. The incident was reported eight nautical miles east of Oman’s Limah. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards later claimed the attack, as well as two other attacks on ships Monday in the waterway.
UKMTO said the tanker’s company security officer had reported that the crew had abandoned the vessel and were aboard a lifeboat and no environmental impact had been reported.
The route around Oman has been the one the US military has encouraged ships to travel to avoid Iran’s control.
With Reuters and the Associated Press
