The United States and Iran traded military strikes for a second straight day Thursday as fighting intensified over control of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway through which a significant share of the world's oil supply passes. U.S. Central Command stated the latest American strikes were aimed at degrading Iran's ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the strait, citing recent Iranian attacks on commercial shipping. Iranian state media reported the strikes killed three people and wounded several others.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded swiftly, announcing retaliatory strikes against U.S. military installations at four bases across Kuwait and Bahrain. The Iranian Army subsequently said it had also targeted sites in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar using one-way attack drones, according to Iranian state television. Missile alert sirens sounded in Jordan's capital, Amman, and in other areas of the kingdom as the conflict spread beyond the immediate theater of operations.

The exchanges came on the same day Iran buried its slain Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28 in joint Israeli and American airstrikes. Khamenei was interred at the shrine city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, following a week of mass funeral processions and mourning ceremonies across the country. His son and designated successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, remained hidden from public view, reportedly having been disfigured in the strike that killed his father.

Adding further tension to the day's events, an Iranian official accused U.S. forces of conducting a strike near the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran's only operating nuclear facility, hours after U.S. Central Command declared it had concluded its strikes for the day. American officials did not immediately acknowledge the allegation. A separate diplomatic track appeared to remain open in Lebanon, where a U.S. delegation was expected to arrive to oversee the implementation of an Israeli military withdrawal from designated pilot zones in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese presidency.