Two American service members were killed, and a third went missing Friday as ballistic missiles and drones struck US positions in Jordan, part of an Iranian barrage that also hit Camp Arifjan’s support center and a radar facility at Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait. CENTCOM said the two were “killed in action as U.S. Central Command and partner forces defended against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks,” according to ABC News.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said its forces struck the US base at Al-Azraq early Saturday and claimed to have destroyed several aircraft there, a claim Reuters said it could not independently verify, according to GV Wire.
The IRGC has said explicitly that it considers Gulf states hosting American forces “complicit” in US strikes on Iran, framing bases like Camp Arifjan and Ali Al-Salem as legitimate targets rather than incidental casualties, per The Tribune.
The casualties came a week after the collapse of a ceasefire and despite continued limited contact between Washington and Tehran, underscoring that diplomacy has so far failed to stop the war’s expansion into direct American combat losses.
