WP: U.S. teeters on all-out war with Iran

A service member was killed in action in Iraq, and another set of unidentified remains was found at the site of an Iranian missile attack in Jordan, U.S. Central Command said, The Washington Post writes.

The United States and Iran moved closer to all-out war over the weekend, 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 Monday morning, the Kuwaiti military said it was responding to drone attacks from Iran, after President Donald Trump said Sunday night that U.S. Central Command launched another wave of attacks against Iran in retribution for the deaths of two service members during a strike on a military base in Jordan on Friday.

That new wave of U.S. strikes, which ended around 10 p.m. Eastern time, targeted “Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks to further diminish Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” Central Command said in a statement overnight.

Centcom also said Sunday that another set of unidentified remains had been found at the base in Jordan. Separately, it reported that 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.

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.

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.

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.

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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