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Iran launched a missile attack on a Jordanian city on Israel’s doorstep on Wednesday, and warnings were issued in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as the nearly two-week war continued.
The Jordanian military said it intercepted four Iranian missiles over Aqaba, while two more landed in “uninhabited areas.” A plume of smoke can be seen overhead in videos recorded by people in the nearby Israeli city of Eilat. Jordan said it also seized four Iranian drones.
Last week, three members of the US were killed in an Iranian attack targeting Iran Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.
The US for the 11th night in a row has launched strikes on Iran as efforts to communicate between the parties show little sign of progress in society. Targets included aircraft hangars and drone storage facilities.
Iran’s IRNA news agency reported explosions in several provinces. Iran’s Ministry of Health says that US strikes over the past 11 days have killed 53 people, including six women and three children, and injured nearly 600 people.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has insisted that its retaliatory attacks will continue.
Another missile warning sounded in Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia warned residents of the Persian Gulf city of Dammam to seek shelter. Saudi authorities later said the danger had passed, without elaborating.
The Pentagon has confirmed that three US soldiers were killed in the Middle East this weekend, raising concerns that a war with Iran could lead to a major conflict as the two sides engage.
Hormuz, the Red Sea routes are in danger
Officials on both sides have been embroiled in a dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for world power that remains largely closed due to Iran’s aggression.
The closure of the river, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas trade passed during peacetime, has shaken the world economy with far-reaching consequences for the Middle East. A new threat by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to target a Saudi ship in the Red Sea puts another trade chokepoint at risk.
US President Donald Trump on social media on Wednesday warned Iran that the US will destroy one bridge or power plant each time Iran fires at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Last week, a number of tanks were damaged in Hormuz from Iranian drones and other unknown projectiles.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has condemned Iran’s actions in the crisis.
If the country “decides to control international waterways, impose taxes and if you don’t pay, blow up your ships, we will create a very dangerous example that will be repeated in other parts of the world,” he told reporters at the conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila.
In response to the attack on Iran, the US reimposed the embargo on Iranian ports.
The spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Interior, Ali Zeinivand, said that “diplomacy has not been stopped” and messages are still being exchanged, without elaborating, according to IRNA.
But Trump offered little insight into possible talks at the White House on Tuesday, saying the US is “not interested in meeting.”
War cost $37.5B: Hegseth
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers in a fiery Senate committee on Tuesday that the war has so far cost Washington $37.5 billion, although it is not clear how the Pentagon arrived at this figure. In the first estimate made public, in late April, a Defense Department official put the cost at $25 billion US in testimony before Congress.
The Pentagon is asking for another $70 billion for the US from Congress, but Democrats and Republicans have complained since the US and Israel began bombing Iran in Feb. 28 that the Trump administration did not inform them about the conflict or the strategy going forward.
After Iranian missiles hit Jordan on Friday, this video was circulated claiming to show missiles hitting a US base in the country. But is the video real or AI generated?
Lawmakers are also concerned about the reduction in the number of missiles and communications equipment, among other things, since the war began.
The number of American soldiers killed in the war in Iran rose to 18 over the weekend, and an estimated 430 American soldiers were wounded. The Pentagon said Monday that 100 service members had been injured since July 7, but 96 percent had returned to duty.
“The president is threatening escalation and war crimes, and he’s suggesting that this could be another eternal war,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday. Trump has repeatedly issued serious threats to Iran, including against civilian infrastructure, which critics say could amount to a war crime.
Trump signaled this week that the US military could target an Iranian nuclear site buried under a mountain.
The site, known as Pickaxe Mountain, is south of Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site, which was blown up by the US during the 12-day war with Israel in 2025. Trump said at the time that the US had destroyed Iran’s nuclear sites, but Pickaxe Mountain was untouched as Iran continued to drill at the site.
Iran has always maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful. Trump in his first term as president pulled the US out of the international agreement that controlled Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and the US has not negotiated a replacement deal. Iran has resumed enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels after Trump’s withdrawal.
