Pasdaran: two US ships and ten tankers hit in the Gulf

Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran, say they attacked two American ships, eight tankers and ten other vessels in the Persian Gulf. The action is presented as retaliation for Tuesday's US strikes, which had hit five Iranian tankers in the same area.

The claim appears in a statement carried by Iran's official news agency, IRNA. It reads: "In response to the aggression of the US military forces that attacked five Iranian tankers in the Persian Gulf, the navy of the Revolutionary Guards targeted and struck two American ships and eight tankers, inflicting considerable damage. In all, ten other vessels were hit."

The statement describes the Pasdaran as Iran's ideological army, a military body separate from the regular armed forces and answering directly to the country's religious leadership.

Missiles also fired at a base in Jordan

On Wednesday the Pasdaran said they had launched missiles at the US military base of Al-Azraq, in Jordan. This action, too, is presented as a response to the US strikes on Iranian tankers. The news was reported by the state news agency IRNA.

According to the Revolutionary Guards' statement, the operation was meant to punish the aggressor and hit "the maintenance and repair facilities, the preparation areas and the deployment sites of the F-35, F-16 and F-15 fighter jets." The Pasdaran also said they had struck "the shelters for combat aircraft, severely damaged, inflicting serious damage on the hostile enemy."

These claims come solely from Iranian sources and have not been independently confirmed, either by Washington or by other parties. The real extent of the damage and the exact number of targets hit in both operations therefore remain unverified.

This sequence of strikes and counterstrikes marks a new phase of tension between the United States and Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, after US forces struck five Iranian tankers on Tuesday.