{"id":354645,"date":"2026-07-30T01:56:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T01:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/354645\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T01:56:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T01:56:29","slug":"us-strikes-iran-as-widening-war-engulfs-more-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/354645\/","title":{"rendered":"US strikes Iran as widening war engulfs more countries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated: 11:40am (AEST)
London, UK\/Cairo, Egypt\/Washington DC, US
Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n

The US carried out fresh strikes in Iran on Wednesday, the US military said, further intensifying a five-month-old war that was already expanding beyond its main fronts to embroil additional countries in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cUS forces began launching strikes against Iran at 8:00 pm ET today (0000 GMT),\u201d US Central Command said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strikes are a powerful response to yesterday\u2019s attempted Iranian attacks on US forces based in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Water jets are fired at a gas tanker after a drone strike, maritime security firm Ambrey said, at Damietta port, Egypt, on 29th July, 2026, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. PICTURE: Social media\/via Reuters<\/p>\n

Earlier on Wednesday, a drone hit a US-owned gas storage tanker at Egypt\u2019s Mediterranean port of Damietta, British maritime security firm Ambrey said in an initial assessment, while US and Saudi forces launched strikes against Iran-aligned groups in eastern Iraq and Iran fired missiles at US troops in Jordan.<\/p>\n

A statement from Egypt\u2019s petroleum ministry confirmed a fire at the port but made no mention of a drone attack.\u00a0It was not immediately clear who was responsible.<\/p>\n

The latest strikes in Iraq and Egypt threatened to draw more Middle Eastern countries into the conflict, after the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen last week declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

The US strikes in Iran on Wednesday followed President Donald Trump\u2019s vow earlier in the day to retaliate against Iran for firing on US troops.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s our turn,\u201d Trump told reporters at the White House, promising to \u201chit them very hard\u201d even as he again said Washington would continue to aim for a peace deal with Tehran.<\/p>\n

Iran confirmed overnight that it had fired on US bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and also spurned an Omani proposal to jointly manage the strait, a critical global shipping route for oil and gas.<\/p>\n

The war began in February, when the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign in Iran that Trump said would last only a few weeks. A temporary ceasefire agreement in June collapsed amid renewed fighting over the strait, which Iran says it now controls.<\/p>\n

Oil prices shot up on Wednesday in one of the sharpest spikes of the five-month war. Brent crude futures rose more than eight per cent to push the benchmark well above $US90 a barrel, reversing much of a plunge earlier this week when Trump had unexpectedly halted US strikes.<\/p>\n

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\u201cDeath to America\u201d shouted in Iraq
The joint US-Saudi attacks also mark the first time Riyadh has publicly joined strikes alongside Washington.<\/p>\n

Iraq\u2019s Popular Mobilisation Forces, powerful Iran-backed paramilitary groups incorporated into the Iraqi security forces, said at least 20 members were killed and 32 wounded in US-Saudi strikes targeting several bases across Iraq.<\/p>\n

Iraqi men shouted Shi\u2019ite sectarian slogans and \u201cDeath to America!\u201d as they carried the bodies of slain fighters in body bags.<\/p>\n

Washington and Riyadh said they struck the Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq in retaliation for drone attacks on Saudi oil targets launched from Iraq.<\/p>\n

After the joint attacks, Saudi Arabia\u2019s defense minister met with Vice President JD Vance in Washington on Wednesday to urge the Trump administration not to escalate the conflict further by attacking Yemen\u2019s Houthis and carrying out additional strikes against the Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, two sources told Reuters.<\/p>\n

One of the sources added that such escalation would open the door to \u201cmajor unknown risks\u201d. The White House and Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

US officials have privately cautioned that resuming major combat operations against Iran would carry risk given the negative impact on stocks of munitions.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Damage at a site belonging to Iraq\u2019s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) following airstrikes that the PMF said were carried out by US and Saudi forces, in Bartella, Nineveh province, Iraq, on 29th July, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. PICTURE: Reuters\/Khalid Al-Mousily<\/p>\n

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based thinktank, estimated this week that the US military has fewer than 1,000 Patriot interceptor inventories and fewer than 250 THAAD interceptors \u2013 two key air defence systems.<\/p>\n

Though Iran denies its forces have directed strikes from Iraqi territory, Iranian newspaper Hamshahri reported that four Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers had been killed in the strikes on Iraq.<\/p>\n

Iraq\u2019s dangerous rift
The strikes on Iraq expose a dangerous rift in that volatile country. The Shi\u2019ite-led government is one of the few in the world to balance close military and diplomatic ties with both Tehran and Washington, but those divided loyalties are a constant source of tension and frequent domestic unrest.<\/p>\n

The office of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who took power just two months ago, urged the parties involved to avoid escalation and said he wanted to keep the country out of regional conflicts.<\/p>\n

The Iraqi presidency denounced the strikes on the paramilitaries as \u201can unacceptable attack and a flagrant violation of Iraq\u2019s sovereignty\u201d, while also calling for a halt to attacks by armed groups against Iraq\u2019s neighbours.<\/p>\n

The deep ties between Iran and Iraq, the two biggest Shi\u2019ite-majority countries, are on display this week as hundreds of thousands of Iranian religious pilgrims head to shrines in Iraq for an annual observance of mourning for martyrs.<\/p>\n

US says it averted Iranian attack on its troops
Hours before launching the joint attacks with Saudi Arabia on Iraq, the US military said its air defences had averted a surprise Iranian attack on US troops in the region.<\/p>\n

Jordan\u2019s military said it had shot down five Iranian missiles. US bases in Jordan have lately become primary Iranian targets, where three US service members were killed this month in the worst US losses since March.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards said they had fired several ballistic missiles at US military installations in Jordan, and had struck three tankers that were attempting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz along an unauthorised route.<\/p>\n

\u2013 With reporting by Reuters bureaux<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated: 11:40am (AEST)London, UK\/Cairo, Egypt\/Washington DC, USReuters The US carried out fresh strikes in Iran on Wednesday, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21],"tags":[170682,170683,170380,750,1982,9749,176,44117,39916,3712,592,65295,1287],"class_list":["post-354645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-egypt","tag-ali-al-zaidi","tag-ambrey","tag-damietta","tag-donald-trump","tag-egypt","tag-houthis","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-jordan","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-us","tag-us-iran-conflict","tag-yemen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/117006446645856854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}