Iran, US trade fire in first exchange for a month
Iran attacked U.S. military targets in the Middle East on Aug. 31 in retaliation for American strikes on an island in the Strait of Hormuz, the first exchange of fire for a month in a war that has engulfed the region.
Six months into the conflict, the two sides remain at an impasse, with Iran keeping the strategic strait shut and Washington persisting with a naval counter-blockade of Iran.
The United States had signaled a pivot to economic pressure in place of military action, but on Aug. 30 said it attacked Iranian rocket launchers on the small island of Larak to prevent Tehran planting mines in the strategic shipping lane.
Tehran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of its military, said they responded by striking two U.S. air bases with ballistic missiles in Washington-allied Jordan, causing “heavy damage.”
