The United States military destroyed five oil tankers linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Tuesday, and Iran retaliated within hours by firing ballistic missiles at a base in Jordan that houses American forces, in the sharpest exchange yet in a Gulf war now in its seventh month.
U.S. Central Command said forces struck four tankers in the Gulf of Oman and a fifth near Kharg Island, Iran's main crude export terminal, after the IRGC twice targeted an American Navy warship with ballistic missiles over the preceding two days. Crews were ordered to abandon the vessels before they were disabled or set ablaze; CENTCOM described the ships as tied directly to the Guard's oil-smuggling network. "If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours," CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said after a similar strike earlier this month, a line the command repeated in describing Tuesday's operation.
Iran responded on Wednesday with what its state media called "fierce" missile strikes on the Al Azraq air base in Jordan, which has hosted U.S. fighter squadrons. Jordan's armed forces said air defenses intercepted 18 incoming missiles, with two falling in unpopulated desert with no casualties reported. Iranian outlets separately claimed strikes on two American vessels and eight further tankers in the Gulf, saying they inflicted "great damage," a claim Al Jazeera reported the Pentagon had not confirmed.
A War Reignited by a Broken Ceasefire
The conflict began on February 28, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other senior officials amid collapsed nuclear talks, touching off months of aerial exchanges before a ceasefire took hold in the spring. That truce collapsed on July 8, when Iran began attacking commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to assert control over the waterway, drawing Washington's navy back into direct confrontation and prompting a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports that remains in place.
The toll has been steep on both sides. Iranian authorities have reported more than 3,500 people killed and over 27,000 injured, while U.S. officials have acknowledged 20 troops killed and hundreds wounded; Israel and Gulf neighbors including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain have also recorded casualties from missile and drone strikes. Traffic through the strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil normally passes, has collapsed to about 10 ships a day from some 130 before the war, according to shipping trackers cited across recent coverage of the Strait of Hormuz campaign.
Oil Nears $100 as Diplomacy Lags Behind the Fighting
Brent crude climbed to roughly $97 a barrel this week, a seven-week high and within reach of the psychologically significant $100 mark, extending a rise of roughly 40 percent since the war began. U.S. gasoline prices have followed, averaging above $4.15 a gallon nationally, nearly a dollar higher than a year ago, according to figures compiled in CBS News's rolling coverage of the war's economic fallout.
Diplomatic efforts have struggled to keep pace with the escalation. Oman and Iran have discussed a framework for a temporary shipping corridor around the strait, and Qatar's government has warned of an "industrial catastrophe" if the crisis drags on, urging both sides back to the table. President Trump has said American forces cleared or detonated mines Iran laid in the waterway and warned that any vessel attempting to place new ones would be destroyed, adding that Washington was monitoring "every square inch" of the strait.
Iran's military has vowed further retaliation against American installations across the region, and U.S. officials have given no indication of scaling back the naval blockade or the campaign against IRGC-linked shipping. With Jordan's air defenses tested for the first time in the conflict and tanker traffic still a fraction of pre-war levels, both militaries and global oil markets are bracing for what analysts increasingly describe as an open-ended confrontation with no diplomatic off-ramp yet in sight.
