UAE reports Iranian drone and missile attack after U.S. says it traded fire with Tehran

Iran launched two ballistic missiles and three drones at the United Arab Emirates on Friday, wounding three people and forcing authorities to warn residents to avoid fallen debris. The attack came hours after the U.S. military said it intercepted strikes on three Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz and disabled two additional Iranian tankers attempting to breach an American blockade.

This latest exchange shreds the illusion of a stable truce barely one month old. Iran has largely sealed the critical waterway since the U.S. and Israel began hostilities on February 28, driving up global fuel prices and freezing hundreds of commercial vessels inside the Persian Gulf. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated plainly that any threat to American forces would be met with destruction: "They threaten Americans, they are going to be blown up."

President Trump dismissed the American response as a "love tap" in a call with ABC while warning of full-scale bombing if Iran refuses to reopen the strait and curb its nuclear program. Iran’s Foreign Ministry countered that the U.S. strikes on tankers near Jask and coastal areas constituted a "clear violation" of the ceasefire. Rubio added that it is "unacceptable" for Tehran to create the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, an agency now vetting and taxing ships in an international chokepoint.

Satellite imagery reviewed by the Associated Press revealed an oil slick covering 95 square kilometers off Kharg Island, Iran’s main crude export terminal. The spill, first spotted Tuesday and spreading at 1.2 miles per hour, predates the latest strikes but underscores the environmental cost of disrupted tanker traffic. Greenpeace’s Nina Noelle warned that continued southward drift threatens ecologically sensitive marine areas in the Gulf.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his government has been engaged "day and night" with both sides to salvage the truce. Meanwhile, direct Israel-Lebanon talks are set to resume May 14-15 in Washington even as a nominal ceasefire with Hezbollah continues to fray in southern Lebanon. A Chinese-crewed tanker registered in the Marshall Islands was attacked near the strait with no casualties, yet Beijing keeps importing Iranian oil.

The contradiction is glaring: Iran has formalized control over a waterway that carries South Korea’s crude imports—more than 60 percent last year—while the world debates whether to accept Tehran as gatekeeper. Rubio asked the obvious: "Is the world going to accept that Iran now controls an international waterway? What is the world prepared to do about it?"

Original reporting: PBS.