The Levant Files

Multiple American military aircraft were damaged during Iranian strikes on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan overnight Tuesday into Wednesday local time, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke to CBS News. Roughly eight F-15 fighter jets sustained light damage in the attack but were reportedly returned to service, the sources said, speaking to CBS News under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. One A-10 Thunderbolt, commonly known as the "Warthog," was also struck and was missing a wing, the people familiar with the matter told CBS News. No U.S. deaths have been reported in the strikes on Jordan, the sources said. The overnight damage marks a significant escalation in the confrontation between Washington and Tehran. It came just hours after the U.S. said Tuesday it had attacked five Iranian tankers in retaliation for Iran targeting a U.S. Navy warship. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded ...

The six-month-old war between the United States, Israel and Iran escalated sharply on Wednesday as US forces destroyed five more Iranian oil tankers, Iran answered with a 20-missile barrage toward an American base in Jordan and claimed fresh attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran-backed Houthis set Saudi oil facilities ablaze — driving Brent crude back above $100 a barrel for the first time since late July. The US military said the tankers were struck after Tehran twice launched ballistic missiles at an American warship in recent days, with crews ordered to abandon ship first; Central Command said it had destroyed ten Iranian tankers in the past week. Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed they hit two US vessels and eight tankers and fired on ten ships trying to cross what Tehran calls a "prohibited and unsafe" zone — a claim CENTCOM dismissed as "completely FALSE," insisting no American warship was struck. The battlefield stretched beyond the Gulf overnight. J...

Hostilities between the United States and Iran sharply intensified overnight into Wednesday, as Tehran launched retaliatory strikes on American-linked bases in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq following a fresh wave of US attacks that Iranian officials say killed civilians at a wedding celebration. According to Iran's Red Crescent, cited by Iranian outlets, a US missile strike sent shrapnel into a home in Kuhestak, Sirik county, Hormozgan province, where a wedding was underway. The organization said more than 50 people were injured and four killed, including a young child. Iran's semi-official IRNA and state broadcaster IRIB also reported explosions across Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Qeshm Island, Konarak and Sirik, with a fishmeal factory, a fishing pier and a maritime authority tower among the sites hit. Officials in Hormozgan said the strikes knocked out sections of the regional power grid, cutting electricity to parts of Kish Island. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)...

Three days after Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias argued in TLF that "red snow will fall before Turkey and Israel deliberately enter an open conflict," the diplomatic record of the past 48 hours has moved in exactly the direction that assessment predicted: toward management, not war. On Sunday, a high-level Syrian delegation led by Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani — flanked by the chiefs of Syria's General and Military Intelligence services — met a senior Israeli delegation, reportedly headed by Mossad chief Roman Gofman, in Jordan. The talks were brokered by Washington and hosted by Amman, according to Syria's state news agency SANA. The two sides discussed, per SANA, mechanisms to "halt Israeli attacks, arrests and targeting operations," the revival of a broader security agreement, and — critically for the Turkey dimension — "efforts to ease tensions between Israel and Türkiye and to prevent their rivalry from spilling" into Syrian territory. AFP sources ...

Amman warns that the gradual normalisation of Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s most contested holy site could transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a wider religious confrontation. Jordan has called an emergency meeting of Arab and Muslim foreign ministers amid mounting fears that Israel is dismantling the decades-old arrangements governing the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. The meeting, scheduled for Wednesday in Amman, will bring together ministers from Arab states as well as Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi is expected to seek a coordinated diplomatic response to what Amman describes as an “imminent” threat to the compound and to Jordan’s custodial role there. “Jerusalem is a tinderbox,” Safadi told The Guardian , warning that interference with the site’s established arrangements could produce repercussions across the Muslim world. There is, however, an important distinction: no Israeli cabinet decision form...

Hundreds of Jordanian political, legal, academic, tribal and cultural figures have signed an open letter demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Jordan and a review of the kingdom’s security agreement with Washington, in what analysts describe as a rare public challenge to Amman’s long‑standing alliance with the United States.  The letter, circulated last week, argues that the American military presence “exposes Jordan to security, political, and economic risks that serve no national interest and increases the likelihood of our country being dragged into a regional conflict to which it is not a party,” according to reporting by The New York Times and other outlets.   Core demands and sovereignty argument Signatories call on the government to cancel or substantially revise the bilateral security arrangement that allows U.S. troops to operate from Jordanian bases, including the strategic Muwaffaq Salti airbase near Azraq.  They frame the demand as a matter of nati...

Jordan is grappling with a dangerous shift in Iran’s regional strategy, as recent missile attacks have turned the kingdom into what one commentator calls a “central arena” in Tehran’s ongoing confrontation with the United States. In a detailed opinion piece on Al Jazeera Arabic, Jordanian journalist Fahd Al-Khitan argues that Iran now treats Jordan not only as a host to American forces, but as a legitimate target for strategic strikes on ports, airports and other vital installations. Al-Khitan notes that the latest wave of attacks marks a departure from the dynamics of the earlier “forty-day war” involving the US, Israel and Iran, during which Jordan largely escaped direct, high‑level targeting. The recent Friday strikes, in which Iranian missiles hit US military assets in one of Jordan’s bases and killed three American soldiers, represent a turning point in Tehran’s approach, he writes. American accounts of the attack, confirmed to the writer by official Jordanian sources, describe ex...

The war between the United States and Iran entered its tenth consecutive night of American strikes on Tuesday, with both sides expanding the geographic scope of their attacks beyond the Strait of Hormuz into a wider arc spanning the Gulf, Jordan and Iraq. US Central Command confirmed it carried out a new wave of strikes against Iran beginning at 4 p.m. ET on Monday, targeting Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, and missile and drone launch sites intended to reduce Iran's ability to attack commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Explosions were reported across nine locations — Abdanan, Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh, Bushehr, Chabahar, Qeshm Island, Sirik, Shiraz and Konarak — marking a notable inland extension of the campaign, with Shiraz among the newly hit cities. CENTCOM said the naval blockade imposed on Iranian ports since mid-July had already redirected seven commercial vessels and disabled one, while noting th...

Iranian media placed reported American military losses in Jordan at the centre of their coverage of the confrontation with the United States over the past 24 hours, presenting them as evidence that Tehran can still impose significant costs on Washington despite continuing US air strikes. The prevailing message across state-aligned and conservative outlets was that Iran had restored a measure of deterrence by demonstrating its ability to hit US forces outside the immediate Gulf theatre. Centrist and opposition-oriented publications, however, gave greater attention to the risks of escalation, disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and the growing effects of the fighting on civilians in southern Iran. Mahr News⁠ prominently reported a US Central Command statement saying that two American service members had been killed in Jordan, while one remained missing and four others were wounded. The agency framed CENTCOM’s announcement as an acknowledgment that Iranian missile and drone attacks had inf...

While the headlines of the past 24 hours have fixed on the deaths of two US service members in a July 17 Iranian ballistic missile and drone strike on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base — the first confirmed American combat fatalities of this phase of the war, and the trigger for Tehran's declaration that the June memorandum of understanding is now "effectively suspended" — a quieter and arguably more consequential contest has been unfolding in parallel. It is a fight over the loyalty of the Jordanian public itself. CENTCOM confirmed that two American troops were killed and a third remains missing after Iranian ballistic missiles and drones struck US positions in Jordan on the night of July 17, with four additional personnel medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals before being discharged. The US responded with an eighth consecutive night of strikes on Iranian targets, which it said were intended in part to "swiftly punish" the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Co...

Iran announced on Saturday that it has suspended all commitments under the Pakistan-brokered Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding with the United States, marking the formal collapse of the fragile arrangement that had sought to end hostilities between Washington and Tehran after last month's war. The declaration came as Iranian forces struck US-linked infrastructure across Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan for a second consecutive day, and as Washington moved additional aerial refueling assets into Israel amid reports that President Donald Trump is weighing a broader offensive against Iranian territory. Tehran declares the MoU dead Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said Tehran considers itself no longer bound by the 14-point Islamabad MoU, arguing that the United States had already dismantled the agreement through repeated violations. "America not only violated the memorandum of understanding but also dismantled it," Gharibabadi said, according to Iran's sta...

The Middle East convulsed once more overnight as the United States pounded Iranian territory for a sixth consecutive night, tearing through bridges, railways, power stations and coastal radar installations in a campaign that has now killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400 since a fragile truce collapsed. In return, Tehran unleashed a sweeping wave of retaliation across five Gulf states — a spasm of missiles and drones that has turned the Strait of Hormuz, and the wider waterways around it, into one of the most dangerous chokepoints on Earth. What began seven days ago as a rekindling of hostilities has, by Friday, hardened into something far graver: a widening war that increasingly resembles regional conflagration rather than contained confrontation. The ceasefire memorandum signed in Switzerland weeks ago now lies in tatters, its provisions abandoned amid a relentless cycle of strike and counterstrike that shows no sign of slowing. Sixth Night, Same Fury US Central Co...

Never before has the Arab world, North Africa, and the wider region sent so many flags to football's biggest stage As the twenty-third FIFA World Cup prepares to kick off across the United States, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19, one storyline towers above the rest for fans from Rabat to Tehran: the greater region stretching from Morocco and Egypt across the Levant to Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Iran has never been so powerfully represented. A record ten national teams from this vast cultural and geographic belt have booked their places at the first 48-team finals, a tally without precedent in the tournament's 96-year history. The expansion to 48 teams has opened the door, but it is the depth of talent and decades of institutional investment that have walked through it. From North Africa's perennial heavyweights to first-time debutants, here are the ten teams carrying the hopes of millions. North Africa's Established Powers Morocco arrive as the region's sta...