The seventh consecutive night of US strikes on Iran reached into the Strait of Hormuz itself early Saturday, Australian time, with Iranian state media placing hits on Qeshm and Larak islands inside the waterway, at the port city of Bandar Abbas that commands it, and as far inland as Ahvaz and Yazd.
Central Command said the wave used fighter aircraft, drones and warships against "surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities", and confirmed the operation complete just before midday AEST. Iranian state media reported at least three people killed and eight wounded in Hormozgan province. Iran's health ministry puts the toll since US attacks resumed in late June at 38 killed and more than 400 wounded, figures that have not been independently verified.
Iranian retaliation crossed a new line on Friday when Kuwait's electricity and water ministry said an Iranian strike hit a power and desalination plant, starting a fire that affected a large number of generating units. Jordan said it intercepted ten Iranian missiles without casualties, and Iran claimed its first strike on the US garrison at Al-Tanf in Syria, which a Syrian military source denied to AFP. "Iran will no longer limit itself to retaliatory, like-for-like responses," Major General Mohsen Rezaei, a senior military adviser to the Supreme Leader, told state broadcaster IRIB, warning that two or three more days of US attacks would bring "a phase of full-scale offensive operations".
Commerce through the strait, the channel for roughly a fifth of the world's oil, has nearly stopped moving. CBS reported eight commercial transits on Thursday, the lowest in three weeks, and no crossings at all by the so-called shadow fleet on Friday. "We've gone back to the worst case scenario. Nobody is willing to move," shipping company chief executive Dimitris Maniatis told the network. War-risk insurance now runs at 3 to 10 per cent of a hull's value, against 0.25 per cent before the war, according to broker Marsh's global marine head Marcus Baker, and The National reported about 6,000 seafarers were stranded in the region as of July 8.
The price followed the risk. Brent settled at US$88.10 a barrel on Friday in New York, up 4.6 per cent on the day and the highest close in a month, with WTI at US$82.49, CNBC reported. Futures reopen Monday morning, Australian time, into whatever the weekend brings.
The talking continues in parallel with the shooting, on the American account of it. "Iran very much continues to talk to the United States of America and express that they want to make a deal with us because they are suffering devastating blows," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday. Iran released Dena Karari, an American detained since December 2024, a step Donald Trump called a gesture of goodwill. At the UN, secretary-general's spokesman Farhan Haq said of strikes on civilian infrastructure: "Such attacks are unacceptable."
Canberra has issued no new statement this week; Foreign Minister Penny Wong's most recent public comments, on July 10, pressed for de-escalation and noted the cost to Australians at the bowser. As of Saturday evening the strait remains closed in practice if not in law, Rezaei's two-to-three-day warning is on the clock, and an eighth night of strikes would arrive before dawn Sunday, Iranian time.
