DUBAI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The U.S. military on Saturday announced its first troop deaths from direct Iranian fire since the opening days of the war, with two killed and another missing in an attack on a base in Jordan after days of intensifying exchanges of fire.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s drone and missile attack sent four other service members to hospitals, the military said. The dead were not identified. Since the war began, 16 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 430 wounded.<\/p>\n
Hours after the announcement, the U.S. military said that it had launched new airstrikes against Iran to \u201cswiftly punish\u201d its paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the deaths of the American troops. U.S. Central Command said the strikes were designed to further degrade Iran\u2019s ability to restrict the traffic of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. <\/p>\n
Earlier Saturday, Iran\u2019s supreme leader had warned of \u201cunforgettable lessons\u201d if the United States keeps attacking the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n
The remarks read out on state TV and attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, still unseen since the war began, also called President Trump\u2019s signature on any agreement \u201cworthless and invalid.\u201d An Iranian negotiator said Tehran was suspending its commitments to the interim deal signed about a month ago with the U.S. and aimed at permanently ending the fighting.<\/p>\n
Tehran\u2019s declarations snapped another fragile thread as the war shows no end in sight. The deal was aimed at permanently ending the fighting. Now Khamenei warns of \u201clessons\u201d not only from Iran but its armed proxies in the region, which Iran refers to as the \u201cAxis of Resistance.\u201d The U.S. issued a global travel alert over the rising tensions.<\/p>\n
The battle focused on the Strait of Hormuz has intensified in a conflict increasingly focused on control of the essential waterway that previously carried a fifth of the world\u2019s crude oil. The widening strikes threatened civilians and services to them, including desalination plants for drinking water, while the global economy again was on alert.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, told state TV that the U.S. has violated its commitments under the deal that was signed about a month ago, and now Iran is \u201cno longer implementing them.\u201d <\/p>\n
There was no new word on mediation efforts.<\/p>\n
U.S. soldiers face growing risks<\/p>\n
The last recorded death of a U.S. service member was that of a helicopter pilot who crashed in the Arabian Sea earlier this month. Early in the war, an Iranian drone strike on a command center in Kuwait killed six soldiers. One soldier died after an attack on a base in Saudi Arabia. Six were killed when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the most significant damage from Iranian strikes occurred in Kuwait, where a water desalination plant and an oil facility were hit, according to Kuwaiti authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Both declined to provide locations.<\/p>\n
It was the second attack against a desalination plant in two days in the tiny desert nation that depends on desalination for 90% of its drinking water. The strikes injured several people at the oil facility and caused a fire at the desalination plant, forcing several power generation units offline.<\/p>\n
Several firefighters and a worker were injured while battling two other blazes sparked by Iranian strikes, according to the Kuwait Fire Force. Kuwait briefly closed its airspace because of missile threats, and Kuwait Airways said it was rescheduling most flights to and from the capital.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Iraq said it shot down attack drones over the city of Irbil. Jordan\u2019s state-run Petra news agency said the kingdom\u2019s air defense systems had downed Iranian missiles, while air sirens sounded multiple times in Bahrain throughout the day and in Saudi Arabia in the morning, according to their governments.<\/p>\n
The secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, accused Iran of war crimes for strikes on infrastructure and civilian facilities. <\/p>\n
Attacks on desalination plants and other civilian sites, by both the U.S. and Iran, may be considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention and other international law.<\/p>\n
U.S. strikes Iranian infrastructure<\/p>\n
The U.S. Central Command said early Saturday that its seventh consecutive night of strikes hit \u201csurveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. airstrikes hit an electricity and desalination plant in Iran\u2019s southern Hormozgan province, Iranian state TV reported. IRNA, the state-run news agency, said the Bonji desalination plant was destroyed, cutting off water supplies to about 10,000 people, and a desalination plant on strategic Qeshm Island inside the Strait of Hormuz was damaged.<\/p>\n
Overnight strikes damaged two tunnels and a bridge, disrupting one of the main highways toward Bandar Abbas, Iran\u2019s main port that sits near the narrowest part of the strait, according to IRNA. The news agency said three bridges were hit Saturday, including one on a route to Bandar Abbas.<\/p>\n
Iran acknowledged \u201cattacks on power infrastructure\u201d during the U.S. airstrikes for the first time Friday when its Energy Ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces \u201cexperiencing extreme heat.\u201d It did not specify what was hit.<\/p>\n