US Missiles Pound Targets From Kharg Island To Jazan: Is The Middle East War Now Uncontainable?

Tehran: The United States military has hit several Iranian oil tankers with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) after fresh attempts to target an American warship with missiles. The fresh strikes escalated tensions in the Middle East, marking a sharp turn in the spiralling conflict in the Gulf. 

The American officials reportedly confirmed the strikes, with the Iranian outlets also reporting multiple hits in the region. The Tasnim news agency stated that an American missile struck an Iranian tanker around 4 miles, about 6 km, from the Kharg Island oil hub, while the state broadcaster said that a second tanker came under attack close to Jask in the Gulf of Oman. The US officials stated to The Wall Street Journal that the incident followed a second wave of Iranian ballistic missile launches against US Navy vessels on Monday.

As per reports, the American military has not publicly confirmed the Monday attack. According to the officials, no American vessels were struck in either the Monday barrage or an earlier attack over the weekend that targeted a US aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer. However, the repeated launches have fuelled unease in Washington over the growing sophistication of Iran’s missile programme and whether Tehran is receiving technical support from China or Russia.

Iran Threatens Vessels In Kuwait And Bahrain

In an early Wednesday response, the IRGC warned that oil vessels docked in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports that host American forces would be targeted in retaliation. A statement carried by Iranian state media stated that the IRGC Navy had advised crews on board those ships to evacuate, a development that dramatically raises the risk to shipping across vital Gulf waterways.

The warning came after a fierce exchange of retaliatory strikes on Saturday, with the US military saying that it had permanently disabled two tankers linked to Iran, one near Kharg Island, the country’s principal oil export terminal, and completely destroyed a third in the Gulf of Oman. The Central Command (CENTCOM) said that the vessels were part of a multi-billion-dollar shadow network that finances the IRGC and its allied proxies.

The CENTCOM also asserted that the operation followed unprovoked ballistic-missile attacks by Iranian forces on a US aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer earlier that day. Both warships managed to evade the incoming fire, and no American personnel were hurt. The Iranian state media acknowledged the American strikes on tankers and claimed the IRGC had hit back by attacking 3 US-affiliated vessels and 3 tankers that were using an unauthorised route through the Strait of Hormuz.

Sanctions And Tanker War Deepen

Alongside the military action, Washington has imposed sanctions on 36 Iranian entities, including 27 airlines, in a bid to further isolate Iran’s aviation sector. The officials have framed the tanker strikes as part of a bigger economic squeeze designed to choke funding streams for the IRGC.

At present, the current round of hostilities is the most intense since fighting flared again a week ago, ending a period of relative calm that lasted around a month. A 60-day ceasefire formally expired last month without any bigger diplomatic settlement. The conflict, which began with sweeping American and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to regular commercial traffic and pushed global energy prices sharply higher, back towards 100 dollars a barrel.

US President Donald Trump has sought to downplay the fighting, calling it “small potatoes” and “intermittent” and branding it as a military conflict rather than a full-scale war. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth struck a blunter tone on Saturday, writing on social media, “It's simple: if Iran shoots at US ships, we will destroy (and sink) their oil tankers.” Trump has not commented on the weekend tanker strikes or the reported attacks on Monday.

Conflict Spills Over Into Saudi Arabia

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis launched attacks on 4 cities in southern Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, wounding over 70 people and setting oil-related facilities ablaze, amounting to a major escalation against a key American ally.

The group, which controls much of Yemen’s populated areas including the capital Sanaa, said that it had carried out a large-scale operation inside Saudi Arabia, using drones and missiles to hit a Saudi airbase in Khamis Mushait and sites linked to state oil giant Saudi Aramco in Abha, Najran and Jazan. The NASA satellite imagery showed thick black smoke rising above the Jazan refinery and a separate plume from an oil distribution facility in Abha.

The Saudi administration confirmed fires at the targeted sites and said that 73 people were injured, including women and children. The casualty figures pointed to one of the most serious assaults on Saudi territory since the American-Israeli war against Iran began in February.