US Central Command says it completed a heavy wave of strikes on dozens of Revolutionary Guard targets in Iran, and the Guard has answered that it will punish the aggressor the same day

US Central Command said that at 10 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, July 29, its forces completed a heavy wave of strikes against Iran, in response to the attempted missile attacks on American forces the day before.

The release says Central Command assets struck dozens of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in Iran. It groups them into four categories: military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities. The stated aim was to further diminish the threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping and neighbouring Gulf countries.

On the attack that prompted it, the release is short and specific. Guard forces launched multiple ballistic missiles from Iran on July 28 in what Central Command calls an attempted surprise attack on US forces based in the Middle East, and all of the missiles were intercepted. Jordan's armed forces said their air defences intercepted five of them.

The release closes by saying that more than 50,000 US service members are currently deployed to the Middle East.

This site reported the July 28 interception on the evening it happened, and noted then that Central Command had published no release of its own and that its statements had reached the public only through news outlets. That gap has now closed. The July 29 release is posted on the command's public releases page, where it sits above a July 28 entry on joint US and Saudi strikes against Iran-backed sites in Iraq.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard answered on Thursday morning. CNBC, reporting Iranian state media, says the Guard declared it will punish the aggressor today, and warned that countries aiding the United States in the conflict would receive a harsh response. The Guard also said it maintains full control of the Strait of Hormuz, and that a stranger who has come from thousands of kilometres away will not be allowed to interfere. No such retaliation had been reported when this was written.

The strikes ended a pause of about a week. The United States had halted two weeks of fire against Iranian targets last weekend while diplomats tried to give peace talks room, and the president signalled the retaliation hours in advance, telling a Fox News reporter early on Wednesday that Iran would be hit hard and would take a beating.

Most of the oil move came before the strikes rather than after them. Brent crude futures settled 7.9 percent higher at $90.74 a barrel on Wednesday and West Texas Intermediate settled 6.6 percent higher at $84.46, a reaction CNBC attributes to the president's warning during the trading day. The strikes themselves landed after the US close. By 5:14 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, in a separate report by Joseph Wilkins, CNBC had Brent up a further 1.5 percent at $92.10 and West Texas Intermediate up 0.9 percent at $85.23.

Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has effectively halted, and Iran has rejected Oman's proposal to divide control of the passage evenly between them. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Wednesday that a prolonged conflict risks drawing in the wider region.

The fighting began in late February. The strait through which about a fifth of the world's oil supply normally moves has been shut for most of that time, which is the mechanism connecting a war several thousand miles away to what American drivers pay.