The United States on Wednesday night launched another round of heavy airstrikes against Iran, which apparently sought to widen the war by attacking an Egyptian port with a kamikaze drone.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said Wednesday night’s strikes were “in response to yesterday’s attempted missile attacks on U.S. forces.”
Iran continued launching attacks against its neighbors on Wednesday and Thursday, including an attack on a Chinese-owned building in Kuwait that killed one person, and another five ballistic missiles lobbed at Jordan.
The Kuwaiti military vowed to take “all necessary measures” to defend against “heinous Iranian aggression.”
That aggression apparently widened to Egypt on Wednesday, as an unidentified drone struck two ships at the port of Damietta near the Suez Canal, starting fires on board.
Reuters quoted “sources familiar with the incident” who said the primary target of the attack appears to have been a floating storage and regasification (FSRU) tanker called the Energos Winter, a ship flagged to the Marshall Islands but owned by an American firm called Energos Infrastructure.
The fire reportedly began aboard Energos Winter after it was struck by a “projectile” on its starboard side, and then spread to a neighboring ship, the Greek-owned liquified natural gas (LNG) tanker Gaslog Salem.
Egyptian officials said the fires were quickly extinguished, no casualties or severe damage was reported, and the port of Damietta has resumed operating at normal capacity after a brief partial shutdown overnight.
Egypt said on Thursday morning there has been no claim of responsibility for the Damietta attack, which could have been launched by Iranian terrorist proxies in Iraq or Lebanon.
President Donald Trump told reporters he has been briefed on the incident and, while he did not disclose any details of the briefing, he strongly hinted that Iran was responsible.
“Well, I can give you a report. I’ve been briefed. It’s a little more of the same, but it’s going to be straightening out,” Trump said on Wednesday.
“We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them. They know it’s coming,” he added.
Iran could be taking a risk by drawing the powerful Egyptian military into the war, although so far none of the nations attacked by Tehran has responded with force, except for Saudi Arabia joining U.S. forces to bomb Iran-controlled militias in Iraq on Tuesday night.
On the other hand, Iran might want to threaten the safety of the Suez Canal to shut down one of the routes employed by the Persian Gulf oil nations to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has largely closed the vital strait with terror attacks and is working on a scheme with its neighbor Oman to extort ransoms from international shipping in exchange for safe passage.