U.S. Mounts 8th Consecutive Night of Strikes on IRGC After Jordan Base Deaths

Washington and Tehran have played versions of this cat-and-mouse before: Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988 saw U.S. ships destroy Iranian naval assets after the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, briefly tipping the Iran-Iraq tanker war in America’s favour. Today’s exchange echoes that logic—punish, degrade coastal sensors, and keep Hormuz open—but against a far more missile-saturated Iran and under the shadow of nuclear latency. The episode spotlights two structural trends: the century-long U.S. imperative to secure Persian-Gulf sea lanes, and Iran’s persistent strategy of using regional proxies and chokepoint leverage to offset conventional inferiority. Whether this moment becomes another fleeting flare-up or the 2020s analogue to the 1956 Suez shift will depend on energy markets’ tolerance and each side’s domestic politics; yet on a 100-year horizon, every confrontation that normalises strikes on civilian infrastructure nudges the laws of war—and the Gulf security architecture—toward a more fragile, deterrence-by-destruction posture.