CENTCOM Confirms U.S. Action Against IRGC Launchers On Larak Island. Earlier today, U.S. forces conducted strikes against two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz. This marks the first military action by the U.S. in the region in over a month, reports Navy Captain Tim Hawkins, spokesperson for CENTCOM. "The IRGC had positioned themselves to launch rockets carrying sea mines in the vicinity of international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz," said Hawkins. "We eliminated the launchers on Larak Island before any sea mines were ever placed in the water."
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired ballistic missiles and drones at two American air bases in Jordan on Sunday in retaliation for the US strike on Iran's Larak Island, the military branch claimed on Sunday. The bases targeted were the King Hussein Air Base near Amman and the Al-Azraq Air Base in the northeastern part of the country. The Revolutionary Guards claimed the attacks destroyed the "technical and maintenance infrastructure" as well as the "Deployment sites of the enemy's fighter jets."
Iran has claimed that its military launched drone attacks on the UAE's Al Minhad Air Base, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claiming that the attacks targeted areas where U.S. helicopters and other personnel are based. The UAE has denied the Iranian claims of the attacks, and there has been no damage reported by the American military stationed at the base.
Trump in Fox News Sunday broadcast said Iran had managed to change the view of the Gulf States towards Iran for the worse in a matter of hours. "As soon as the shooting started they started shooting at Saudi Arabia, at Qatar, at UAE, at Bahrain and at Kuwait," he said. "Everybody was surprised. I was surprised too. They have lost a lot of support."
In a video posted to his personal Twitter account earlier in the day, President Trump showed an oil hub on the Iranian island of Kharg being "blown to smithereens." But Iran's National Iranian Oil Company CEO Hamid Bovard laughed at the video in an interview with state-run Iranian media, saying life on Kharg was back to normal with repair and modernization work going on to the oil facility that handles around 90% of Iran's oil exports.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US would begin to roll out secondary sanctions on a weekly basis targeting banks around the world conducting business with Iran. The sanctions will be "financial violence if we have to," said Bessent who is in North Carolina for G20 meetings in Asheville. A proposed rulemaking will target the UAE branches of Egypt's Banque Misr, the first action in the new campaign, which was announced by the US Treasury Friday.
The new round of attacks has put an end to a stalemate that had lasted for about a month. Operation Epic Fury, launched on 28 February, is far from over and there is still no ceasefire framework in place.
