Iran attacks US base in Jordan, ships near Hormuz after tankers sunk

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it ​fired ballistic missiles at a base in Jordan used by the U.S. military and attacked 10 ships on Wednesday, after the U.S. said it had destroyed ‌five Iranian oil tankers, in a sharp escalation of the six-month-old war.
Increased attacks by both the U.S. and Iran have shattered a month of relative calm, hitting military, shipping and energy assets, sending oil prices surging and drawing in regional allies in recent days.

The Americans said they destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday. The U.S. military's Central Command posted video of the strikes, which it called a response to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting ​a U.S. Navy warship twice with ballistic missiles over the previous two days. No Americans were harmed, the U.S. said.
"Iran continues to try to hit U.S. naval ships, and ​for every time they do that or try to do that, they're going to lose tankers," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters ⁠during a visit to Colombia.
Iran then carried out a ballistic missile attack on a base used by U.S. forces near Al Azraq in Jordan, according to an IRGC statement on state ​media.

The IRGC said on Wednesday it also attacked 10 ships, including two U.S. vessels and eight oil tankers, attempting to cross a "prohibited and unsafe" area of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy conduit largely choked off by Iranian attacks.