Sailors prepare an F/A-18F Super Hornet for launch off the flight deck of USS Abraham Lincoln on May 31, 2026. (U.S. Navy)
The U.S. and Iran traded fire overnight after multiple tankers were targeted in the Strait of Hormuz, setting off another round of hostilities and prompting accusations of ceasefire violations.
President Donald Trump, speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday, said to him, the latest attacks mean the ceasefire is over.
In a statement posted to X, U.S. Central Command said its forces launched the early Wednesday strikes “to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.”
“Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire,” CENTCOM said.
CENTCOM said in a follow-up statement that the U.S. struck more than 80 targets, including “Iranian air defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, and more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait.”
Early Wednesday, reports from Kuwait and Bahrain indicated Iran had launched attacks against targets in those countries.
The Kuwaiti army said in a post on X that its forces were “confronting hostile missile and drone attacks.” Bahrain’s interior ministry sounded alarms and urged residents to take cover.
A U.S. military official told Stars and Stripes that no U.S. personnel were injured in the Wednesday attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait. All missiles and drones fired by Iran were intercepted or failed to cause major damage, the official added.
The United States operates the headquarters for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command at Naval Support Activity Bahrain and maintains a presence at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.
The U.S. Navy issued multiple incoming missile warnings to service members in Bahrain on Wednesday morning, directing them to shelter in place, according to messages seen by Stars and Stripes.
The latest escalation was set off Tuesday after the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center, a British monitoring organization, reported three tankers were struck by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz.
Two vessels suffered some damage, but no one was injured, and both continued on their way, the center said. The third tanker traveling off the coast of Oman caught fire.
The head of the International Maritime Organization on Wednesday condemned the attacks on tankers, and urged shipowners to avoid exposing seafarers to danger by transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Doing so would intensify the strain on the nearly 6,000 people stranded on vessels and unable to depart the Persian Gulf safely, Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said in a statement.
Shortly after news of the tanker attacks, the U.S. Treasury reinstated the sanctions it had temporarily lifted against Iranian oil sales as part of negotiations following last month’s memorandum of understanding.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker, in a post to X, accused the U.S. of violating the MOU.
“The era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We don’t fold,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said.
An interim peace deal reached last month has repeatedly been tested by attacks. Talks to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, halt Tehran’s nuclear program and reach a permanent end to the war that started Feb. 28 are on hold.
