Iran says it destroyed a US radar in Bahrain in revenge for a strike near the Strait of Hormuz; the US denies it

Strike and counter-strike

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Friday it had targeted and destroyed a US early-warning radar in Bahrain, in response to a US airstrike on a communications tower in Sirik, overlooking the Strait of Hormuz, the Guardian and Al Jazeera reported. It is Iran’s first direct attack on US military installations for months, the Guardian said.

“This is a serious warning to the aggressor enemy to end its aerial mischief and oil smuggling in the strait of Hormuz. In the event of repeated violations and aggression, the IRGC aerospace force is on full alert to confront the enemy without constraint.”

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, The Guardian World(translated)

US Central Command denied that the radar had been destroyed and said US forces had intercepted two Iranian drones heading for Bahrain.

Trump holds back, for now

In a series of interviews over the past 24 hours, President Donald Trump said he would attack Iran only if necessary, and claimed that Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia had urged him to hold back from planned large-scale strikes, the Guardian reported.

Trump said he had asked Vice-President JD Vance to drop his interest in negotiating a new deal with Iran. Iran had seen Vance as the most trustworthy figure close to Trump, but had rejected his request for a personal meeting with its negotiators. Trump also said he was disappointed in the American public, because higher diesel prices were a small price to pay to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

Doubts in Britain, doctrine in Tehran

A YouGov poll for the Council for Arab-British Understanding found that 65% of Britons would oppose the US resuming the war in Iran and 14% would back it, while 54% opposed the US using UK bases for attacks on Iran and 29% supported it.

In Tehran, the Assembly of Experts, the 88-member body of clerics that chooses the supreme leader, called on Thursday for a review of Iran’s membership of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, describing it as an “unavoidable necessity”. The Guardian said it was the first governing institution in Iran to call for a review of the country’s defence doctrine, a step that could lead to religious permission to seek a nuclear weapon, despite a long-standing fatwa against such weapons issued by the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei.