The U.S. military destroyed five more Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday, bringing the four-day total to eight, after Iran's Revolutionary Guard twice tried and failed to hit an American warship with ballistic missiles. Iran answered within hours by firing twenty ballistic missiles at a Jordanian air base that hosts American troops. Jordan's air defenses shot down eighteen of them. Nobody on either side was hurt, and by Tuesday night Washington had also sanctioned every remaining Iranian airline still in the air. Six months into this war, a pattern is getting hard to miss: American systems are working, and Iran's retaliation keeps falling short of its own press releases.

What did the U.S. actually destroy this week?

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that its forces destroyed the Iranian crude carriers M/T Kaviz, M/T Charminar, M/T Horizon 1 and M/T Riesco in the Gulf of Oman on September 8, along with the M/T Derya near Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export hub. The strikes came after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried twice in two days to hit a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles. CENTCOM said the warship "successfully evaded the attempted Iranian attacks and continued to patrol regional waters," and that "no American personnel were harmed." American forces told the tankers' crews to abandon ship before striking them.

That is on top of three tankers CENTCOM destroyed on September 5 after the Guard tried to hit a U.S. aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer. Eight tankers in four days, zero American casualties, and by CENTCOM's own account "all IRGC attempts against U.S. Navy warships have failed." Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the trade explicit while traveling in Colombia. "Iran continues to try to hit U.S. naval ships," he told reporters. "And for every time they do that or try to do that, they're going to lose tankers. And I think you'll see that again today."

Why is Iran firing missiles at a base in Jordan?

Hours after the tanker strikes, the Guard fired twenty ballistic missiles at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, known locally as Al-Azraq, in Jordan's Zarqa governorate. Jordan's military said its air defenses intercepted and destroyed eighteen of them, with the other two landing in open desert. No casualties were reported.

Jordan hosts roughly 4,000 U.S. troops under a 2021 defense agreement covering twelve military installations, according to a 2026 Congressional Research Service report. Al-Azraq is one of the few sites in the kingdom built to hold F-35s, F-16s and F-22s, and it became a bigger logistics hub for American aircraft once the war with Iran began. "Jordan provides great strategic depth," Washington Institute fellow David Schenker told the Associated Press, noting the distance it gives U.S. forces from Iran's missiles compared with the Gulf states next door. That distance is exactly why Tehran keeps trying to close it.

Do Iran's damage claims actually hold up?

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called this week's barrage "devastating" and claimed it destroyed hangars built for American fighter jets. State media also claimed strikes on two U.S. Navy destroyers, saying they caused "significant damage." A Trump administration official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity that the missile barrage caused no casualties and that "the Iranian response was ineffective against integrated air and missile defenses." CENTCOM told the Associated Press it had no information to offer on the destroyer claims.

That gap between Iranian claims and what actually happens at Al-Azraq is not new. Tehran has claimed hits on the base more than ten times since March. On June 10, the Guard said its missiles destroyed hangars and command centers there. Jordanian and American authorities said at the time that every projectile had been intercepted with no casualties. The one exception is worth stating plainly rather than glossing over: on July 17, Iran struck the base with ballistic missiles and drones, and CENTCOM confirmed two U.S. service members were killed in action, one was listed missing and four more were wounded. Iran's claims are usually wrong. They were catastrophically right once, which is exactly why Jordan's PAC-3 batteries stopping eighteen of twenty missiles this week is not a small thing.

What was happening on the financial front the same day?

While the tanker and missile story dominated headlines, the Treasury Department made a quieter but arguably bigger move. Under an initiative called Operation Economic Outcast, first announced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on August 24 as "Economic D-Day," the Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 36 targets on September 8, including all 27 remaining active Iranian airlines and nine foreign companies in Turkey, the UAE, Malaysia and Kazakhstan accused of helping Iran's already-sanctioned Mahan Air move cargo and dodge sanctions.

"Today, we followed through on that promise with sanctions on companies that continue to support Mahan Air," Bessent said in the Treasury announcement. "Let this be a warning to anyone doing business with Iran's remaining airlines, all of which we sanctioned today: You are at risk of being cut off from the global financial system." Treasury said Iran's commercial airlines have long served as cover for the Guard to move weapons, cash and personnel, and that this action leans on an aviation-sector determination Treasury issued back in August.

What does this mean for gas prices heading into the midterms?

Brent crude climbed as high as $99.46 a barrel on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, as both sides fight over control of the Strait of Hormuz, the passage that once carried about a fifth of the world's oil before this war started. That is a real cost, and rising energy prices are a genuine political problem for Republicans heading into November. It is also the trade the administration has chosen on purpose: squeeze Iran's oil income hard enough, long enough, that the regime cannot fund the Guard's proxies or rebuild what it loses at sea.

Not everyone thinks that trade is worth it. Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran researcher at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, warned that the tanker-for-tanker, missile-for-missile exchanges carry their own danger. "There is no kinetic solution to the Strait of Hormuz problem," he said. "Every attempt to impose one only brings Washington and Tehran closer to an escalation that may become increasingly difficult to control." That is a fair warning, and it deserves to be printed rather than waved away.

Where does this actually leave Iran?

Worse off than its own statements suggest. The same week it claimed to have devastated an American air base, Iran's Revolutionary Guard also announced it had captured an unmanned U.S. submarine near the Strait of Hormuz in what it called "a complex intelligence and operational action." The U.S. military's answer was blunt: the drone had simply malfunctioned while surveilling regional waters, carried no classified sonar or radar equipment, and collected no sensitive data. It is the same story as Al-Azraq, told in miniature. Iran announces a battlefield win. The people who actually control the equipment in question say otherwise, and so far the record keeps siding with them.