Iran Strikes US Bases in Jordan After Larak Island Attack

Jordan’s military says it intercepted all eight missiles Iran fired at two US-linked air bases Sunday into Monday — a claim that, if accurate, would mean Iran’s declared “Punishment of the Aggressor” operation caused no confirmed damage, even as Tehran presented it as a decisive response to an American strike that killed and wounded Iranian personnel a day earlier.

The exchange began when US forces struck two IRGC missile launchers on Iran’s Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, with American officials saying the sites were preparing to deploy naval mines. Iran disputed that justification outright, rejecting any claim that mining was underway, and said the strike caused both military and civilian casualties. The IRGC responded hours later with what it called a combined ballistic missile and drone operation against Jordan’s King Hussein and Al-Azraq air bases, saying it used solid-fuel Kheibar Shekan missiles to strike “technical and maintenance infrastructure and fighter-jet deployment areas.” Reports also indicated Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar was targeted in the same operation.

The gap between Iran’s claims and the ground truth, as reported by Jordan and US outlets, is stark. Jordan’s armed forces said its air defense systems intercepted all eight missiles that entered its airspace before they could reach their targets, and a Fox News reporter posted that nearly all incoming missiles had been intercepted with no significant impact initially reported. That leaves Iran’s claim of “significant damage” to base infrastructure unverified by any independent party — consistent with a pattern of unconfirmed capability claims from Iranian officials throughout this war, though the scale of this particular claimed operation, spanning three bases across two countries, is larger than most previous rhetorical assertions.

IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi tied the strike directly to Washington’s economic pressure campaign, calling the Larak Island attack “a strategic and fatal error by the Trump regime in the course of the economic war” that would “shift the balance against its planners and entail heavy costs.” That framing lands one week after Bessent’s “Operation Economic Outcast” sanctions rollout aimed at cutting off Iran’s global financial networks — Bessent said Monday the US would sanction another bank this week and continue pressuring other countries to reduce economic ties with Tehran, meaning the military and economic tracks of this conflict escalated within the same 48-hour window rather than separately.

Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, condemned the Larak Island strike on X and warned of a “devastating response” — language consistent with a string of similar threats from Iranian officials in recent weeks that have, until now, not translated into a strike on this scale against multiple bases simultaneously. The UK Maritime Trade Operations also reported a merchant vessel struck by a projectile north of Khasab, Oman, suggesting the disruption to Gulf shipping extended beyond the direct Iran-US-Jordan exchange.

The strait’s contested status is now, once again, the central unresolved question underlying the entire exchange. The US maintains it has cleared all mines and restored safe transit, citing millions of barrels moved under military protection; the IRGC Navy insists it retains full control and that the waterway remains closed to any vessel transiting without Tehran’s coordination. Monday’s strikes did nothing to resolve that dispute — if anything, they demonstrate both sides are now willing to escalate militarily specifically over which account of the strait’s status prevails, rather than settling it diplomatically through the Oman or Qatar channels that have occupied months of parallel negotiation.