Two very different versions of the same night emerged from the Gulf on Friday. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards insisted that their air and missile units had knocked out an American radar station built to spot incoming threats, somewhere on Bahrain, during the small hours. According to US Central Command, nothing of the sort happened: the Guards launched two explosive drones in the direction of the island kingdom, American forces brought both down, and no one was hurt.
Neither account could be confirmed independently, and Bahrain offered no immediate comment. Tehran framed the operation as payback for what state media described as an enemy air raid on a telecoms mast in Sirik, a port on Iran’s southern coast overlooking Hormuz. The Guards notably avoided naming the United States as the culprit. Sirik houses part of the network Iran uses to watch shipping in the strait, and it has been struck repeatedly since American and Israeli attacks opened the war on February 28.
If the Iranian claim stands, it would be the first reported attack on American forces stationed in a Gulf country since the start of September. The island is where the Fifth Fleet of the American navy keeps its headquarters. The Guards’ statement went further, promising to respond without geographic limits if what it described as provocations from the air and illicit oil shipments went on, and threatening companies that ignore Iranian rules.
The waterway remains a minefield, at times literally. The Guards said a liquefied natural gas carrier was rocked by a mine blast on Friday after taking a route Tehran considers off limits, following reports of four oil tankers damaged on Wednesday and Thursday.
The flare-up follows a hardening tone in Washington. President Donald Trump posted on Thursday that the time for a deal with Iran had passed and reassigned Vice President JD Vance, who had led efforts to restart talks, to domestic investigations. Energy prices rose on the news.
