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The United States and Iran moved closer to all-out conflict on Sunday, as the exchange of attacks on civilian and military structures continued to escalate and with at least three and possibly four U.S. service members killed since combat resumed a week ago.
On Sunday, after two service members were killed during an Iranian strike on a military base in Jordan on Friday, U.S. Central Command said another set of unidentified remains had been found there. Separately, Centcom said a U.S. service member in northern Iraq was killed in action Saturday during a "controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance" from a downed Iranian drone.
President Donald Trump said that U.S. Central Command launched another wave of attacks against Iran in retribution.
"We hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honor of the ... great patriots" who were killed, he told reporters after landing at Joint Base Andrews following the World Cup final match on Sunday.
That new wave of strikes targeted "Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz," Central Command said in a statement Sunday.
Earlier, Trump called the initial two U.S. deaths, which occurred as the war moved through its fifth month, "a very sad thing."
He told NewsNation in what the outlet said Sunday was a brief telephone call, that he "couldn't care less" about Iran's announcement that it would no longer abide by the bilateral memorandum of understanding reached a month ago.
"The U.S. is planning for a wider war," said one U.S. official familiar with internal administration discussions, adding that the Pentagon was increasing the number of military aircraft in the region.
But the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, cautioned that the expansion of U.S. operations will be limited by dwindling stockpiles of air defense and long-range munitions and constraints on the ability to surge more troops and aircraft into the area because of battle damage.
"We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don't think the White House is aware of that," the official said.
Military experts have said that in addition to the toll taken on U.S. equipment and munitions stocks, the U.S. is unprepared for possible ground operations inside Iran that Trump last week refused to rule out.
"I think it would be a mistake to put ground forces anywhere in islands in the strait or onshore," said Seth Jones, who heads the defense and security department at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I don't think U.S. forces are prepared for standoff strikes from Iranians."
It was the eighth straight day of bombing since the negotiated ceasefire collapsed with a hailstorm of retaliatory attacks after Iran attacked commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz in what it said was a violation of the MOU.
Centcom, which oversees operations in the region, said its overnight Saturday strikes had "successfully hit Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities, and missile and drone storage sites." It said they also targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces that hit U.S. troops in Jordan.
Iran said U.S. forces had also attacked a nuclear power plant under construction in the country's southwest.
But the Trump administration made little comment during the day Sunday. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, in an appearance on ABC's "This Week," said that the U.S. mission to degrade "Iran's ability to terrorize the world" would go on "until the mission is done."
The U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said U.S. strikes on bridges and rail lines around Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz, last week were viewed by Iran as an escalation and generated a wider response.
"They had less concern about inflicting mass casualties on the United States," the official said.
On Sunday, Kuwaiti authorities said Iran had attacked a power and water plant there for the second day in a row. Iran said it had launched drone strikes against U.S. military positions in Kuwait.
Jordan said it had intercepted three Iranian missiles targeting the kingdom amid reports that the port and airport in the southern city of Aqaba, near the Israeli city of Eilat, were under attack. The Jordanian government denied a report by the U.S. Embassy in Amman that the Aqaba airport had been evacuated.
Iran also said two unidentified vessels had met with an unspecified "accident" while trying to transit an "unsafe" route through the strait, presumably the U.S.-protected southern passage along the coast of Oman that Iran has said it will not allow.
Trump has said that "radicals" in Tehran have fractured the Iranian government, although some internal assessments there have indicated that the war has begun to solidify support for a harder line.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews before departing for the Philippines, said the U.S. "always remains open to a diplomatic solution." But, he said, "it's growing apparent that even within their own system, there's a growing split."
Echoing a Saturday statement attributed to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a social media post that "sacred unity is not merely a more or social recommendation, it is a necessary condition for victory in the struggle against the enemy." The administration has considered Ghalibaf, Iran's chief negotiator in earlier talks with the U.S., one of the more pragmatic Iranian leaders.
Wright defended Trump's original statement that the war, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, would last four to six weeks until Iran capitulated.
Fighting was paused under the MOU, he said, "to try to get an agreement with the Iranian people to allow oil to flow without them attacking."
Wright said public data indicating the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz has come to a near stop was "incorrect."
The U.S., which has reimposed its naval blockade on all shipping entering and leaving Iranian ports and said it will protect other ships traveling through the strait along the southern corridor, "is assuring that oil and gas and other products can flow … with or without Iranian cooperation" he said, adding that an average of 7 million barrels a day of oil has successfully navigated that route over the past week.
Comparing today's U.S. gas prices to the high they reached four years ago during the covid-19 pandemic, Wright said they are now "one-dollar-a-gallon cheaper" than "under the Biden administration."
But prices, which increased rapidly after the start of the war before falling during and immediately after the MOU negotiations, have risen rapidly over the past week and are averaging about $4 a gallon.
"I don't know what gas station the secretary's going to, but before the war, the average price of gasoline in Virginia was $2.81," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), who followed Wright on "This Week."
"I see no path in the short term how the strait is going to be settled," said Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "This war of choice has been a disaster. It has been a disaster militarily. It has been a disaster in terms of how we're viewed around the world."
The recent U.S. troop deaths have revived questions about the safety of American forces at bases in the Middle East.
A soldier who had previously deployed to Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, where the two U.S. service members were killed, said many of buildings there are containerized or metal buildings and tents and are not able to withstand rocket, mortar or drone attacks.
But even the military's newer construction at some bases in the region, where they are hardened with layers of thick walls, cannot protect against a direct hit from a ballistic missile, said the soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
In early March, during an intense exchange of missile strikes between the U.S. and Iran, a direct hit on hardened barracks at Camp Arifjan, a U.S. Army facility in Kuwait, broke through the layers of protection, destroying about half of the structure, the soldier said. Similar heavy destruction has occurred at U.S. military facilities across the region, he said.
"We're getting beat up across the board," the soldier said.
The fatal attack Friday in Jordan was at least the second time in a week that Iran had successfully targeted that installation. A strike about a day earlier injured about 20 service members. Some of them suffered shrapnel wounds, the U.S. official said.
In addition to the total of 17 - and possibly 18 - U.S. service members killed in the military operations against Iran, more than 430 have been injured. In the past week, Jordan has been a repeat target, and at least two other significant attacks have occurred there: one targeting King Faisal Air Base and another striking Prince Hassan Air Base. The first injured several service members, while the latter damaged Black Hawk helicopters, the official said.
Spokespeople at the Pentagon and Centcom declined to comment on the earlier attacks. The Pentagon has not held a news briefing about operations against Iran since May 5.
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