Iran said Friday it targeted U.S. facilities and partners across the Middle East in what appears to be its biggest retaliation since a fragile ceasefire collapsed nearly a week ago.
US forces have been attacking Iran for the past six days (sometimes multiple times a day). Washington says the new attack targets commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for Iran’s failure to uphold a memorandum of understanding that was supposed to establish a framework for lasting peace.
That agreement is now in tatters. And the Iranian military, which the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed to have annihilated, remains powerful.
CNN previously reported that Iran may still have thousands of drones and missiles, enough to sustain this pace of attack for a long time.
By early April, the Pentagon said Iranian missile and drone attacks had fallen 90% since the war began in late February. However, it is not known exactly how many missiles and drones Iran had when the war began, and how many have since been used or destroyed.
Just before the ceasefire began in April, Iran still had thousands of drones and about half of its missile launchers intact, CNN reported, citing U.S. intelligence officials.
By late May, Iran had resumed production of the drones and was replacing missile bases and launch pads destroyed earlier in the war, sources told CNN.
Analysts say Iran does not need a vast inventory of drones and missiles to destabilize the region and effectively blockade the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off about 20% of the world’s pre-war oil supplies.
And by Thursday evening in the Gulf, Iran’s actions over the past six days appeared to be having the desired effect.
According to open source data from MarineTraffic, only three ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours.
Before the war, an average of about 110 ships passed through the strait each day.
