U.S. forces destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying boats near the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday as Washington moved to prevent Tehran from disrupting one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes, the Pentagon confirmed. U.S. Central Command said the vessels were among multiple Iranian naval assets “eliminated” during operations targeting potential mine threats along Iran’s coast. President Trump warned Iran earlier in the day that severe consequences would follow if mines were deployed in the narrow waterway.

The warning from Trump came after reports that Iranian small craft capable of carrying sea mines had been detected moving into the 100-mile waterway. At a Pentagon briefing Tuesday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said U.S. forces are actively targeting mine-laying vessels and storage facilities linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We will continue to hunt and strike these threats,” Caine said. The strait carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil daily — making its closure, even a partial or threatened one, one of the most consequential single acts available to Iran in the energy domain.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth opened Tuesday’s Pentagon briefing by declaring that Day 12 of Operation Epic Fury would be the heaviest air campaign of the war to date — more fighter jets, more bombers, more strikes than any preceding day, backed by increasingly refined intelligence. He also delivered an update on Iran’s declining offensive capacity: “The last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing yet,” — a data point that, combined with CENTCOM’s 90% missile decline figure, suggests Iran’s launch capacity is now approaching a militarily negligible level.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine followed with a detailed accounting. The U.S. military has now struck more than 5,000 targets — more than twice the number cited just one week earlier — and confirmed the destruction of more than 50 Iranian naval ships. The operation’s core objectives remain in focus: destroying Iran’s ballistic missiles, dismantling its navy, and degrading its military industrial base, including its nuclear capacity. Caine confirmed Iranian ballistic missile attacks are down 90% and one-way attack drone use has fallen by 83% since the campaign’s opening day.

Both Caine and Hegseth directly addressed growing public and congressional concerns that Operation Epic Fury could evolve into a long-term military commitment. The administration remains focused on achieving the specific military objectives of the operation — not reconstruction, not occupation. On the status of Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, neither Hegseth nor Caine was able to verify overseas reports that he had been injured in the opening day strikes — saying only that they could not confirm the reports at this time.

Iran launched new attacks across Gulf Arab countries on Tuesday, targeting U.S. military host nations and critical energy infrastructure simultaneously. The attacks came after Iran’s powerful IRGC warned that not “a single liter of oil” would leave the Persian Gulf while the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign continues — a threat that Tuesday’s strikes on refinery infrastructure began to make material. Since the war began on February 28, Iranian attacks on Gulf states have killed at least seven people and injured more than 120 others, according to regional officials.

The Ruwais strike is particularly significant. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) complex processes up to 922,000 barrels of oil per day, making it one of the most important refining hubs in the Gulf. Industry monitor IIR Energy indicated that ADNOC halted operations at a major crude distillation unit at its 417,000-barrel-per-day Ruwais Refinery 2, while earlier reducing production at another refinery due to the escalating conflict. A blaze broke out within ADNOC-operated facilities after the drone strike. The UAE is also the country considering freezing billions of dollars in Iranian shadow assets — making the timing of the refinery attack a pointed Iranian message. Officials across the Gulf warned that continued assaults could threaten shipping routes and critical energy infrastructure throughout the region.

The violence consuming the Gulf has heightened fears among the region’s millions of foreign workers — including a significant Christian population living in Bahrain under sirens, curfew warnings, and the reality of Iranian missiles now striking residential buildings in the capital Manama. The Iranian attack on Bahrain on Tuesday — three missiles and a drone, one of which hit a residential building and killed a 29-year-old Bahraini woman — marked one of the most serious strikes on the kingdom since tensions escalated.

Bahrain hosts an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Christians, the overwhelming majority of them expatriates from the Philippines, India, and various African and European nations working in the kingdom. A small number of Bahraini citizens are also believed to be Christians in the predominantly Muslim country. Many foreign workers are employed as domestic staff, construction laborers, or in the services and hospitality sectors — with limited access to emergency evacuation resources and uncertain immigration status making their position particularly vulnerable during a security crisis.

The experience of believers like Maretis — maintaining faith under sustained threat, finding prayer as both spiritual practice and survival response — reflects the reality of millions of Christians living and working across Gulf states now under active Iranian attack. The broader situation across the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia is similar: foreign Christian workers in each of those countries are experiencing the war’s effects daily, through sirens, evacuation advisories, workplace closures, and restricted movement. The FFN community is encouraged to hold these sisters and brothers in prayer as the conflict continues.

Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense said a ballistic missile launched from Iran was intercepted over the eastern Mediterranean before it could reach Turkish territory. Officials said the projectile was destroyed before impact, with debris falling in an open area near the southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep. No casualties were reported. It was the second Iranian ballistic missile incident involving Turkish airspace in recent days, according to Turkish officials — a pattern of targeting that raises serious questions about whether Iran is deliberately probing NATO’s southeastern perimeter.

Russia backed Iran’s new leader on the same day as the Turkey incident, with President Vladimir Putin pledging “steadfast support” for Mojtaba Khamenei and expressing confidence he would continue his father’s policies — a direct counter to Trump’s “unacceptable” declaration. China also issued a warning against foreign interference in Iran’s “internal affairs.” The dual great-power backing for the Iranian regime, combined with Turkey’s refusal to invoke Article 5, illustrates the complex multilateral dimension of a conflict that began as a bilateral U.S.-Israeli strike operation and has steadily drawn in NATO, Gulf states, Russia, and China.

Financial markets delivered one of the most volatile single sessions tied to the conflict on Monday. Asian stocks tumbled overnight, with South Korea’s Kospi index briefly triggering an automatic trading halt after falling more than 6 percent amid heavy selling. European shares declined as investors sought safer assets. Wall Street opened sharply lower. In total, the conflict has wiped roughly $6 trillion off global equity markets in recent days — a figure reflecting the war’s cumulative impact on investor confidence, energy price projections, and supply chain risk assessments.

The dramatic reversal in the final trading hour was directly triggered by Trump’s hint during his CBS News interview that the war with Iran “could be over soon.” The market’s interpretation was immediate and sharp: if the conflict is approaching resolution, the Hormuz blockade risk diminishes, oil supply normalizes, and the war premium embedded in equity prices since February 28 can begin unwinding. Crude oil fell quickly after surging past $100 per barrel — dropping on the same Trump comments that sent stocks higher. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose more than 1.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped about 240 points (recovering from an earlier loss of more than 800 points), and the benchmark S&P 500 gained 0.8%. South Korea’s overnight trading halt underscored how dependent Asian manufacturing economies — with their deep oil import dependency and exposure to Middle East supply chains — are on the strait remaining open.

Russia backed Iran’s new Supreme Leader on Monday, with President Vladimir Putin pledging “steadfast support” for Mojtaba Khamenei and expressing confidence that the 56-year-old would continue his father’s policies — a direct challenge to the Trump administration’s framing of Mojtaba as “unacceptable.” China simultaneously warned against “foreign interference in Iran’s internal affairs” — language clearly aimed at Washington’s stated ambition of shaping Iran’s post-war leadership toward a “great and acceptable” figure. Despite relentless U.S.-Israeli bombardment, Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani also warned on Monday that the strategic Strait of Hormuz was unlikely to become secure while the war continues. European leaders have urged de-escalation and diplomacy, with the EU beginning to evacuate thousands of its citizens from the region while preparing humanitarian aid for Lebanon. Analysts warn the conflict risks drawing additional regional actors into a confrontation that threatens both global energy supplies and international security — a risk that Turkey’s Article 5 refusal and the Houthis’ restrained-but-armed posture keep live every day the campaign continues.