US Central Command (CENTCOM), the American military headquarters for the Middle East, struck dozens of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets inside Iran between 20:00 and 22:00 EDT on Wednesday 29 July, hitting military command centres, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance posts and air-defence sites1. The command described the operation as "a powerful response to yesterday's attempted Iranian attacks on US forces"2. Earlier the same day IRGC ballistic missiles had hit Muwaffaq Salti Air Base at Azraq in Jordan, the base that hosts American aircraft and, the Guard claimed, a CENTCOM headquarters element3.
The strikes ended a bombing pause four days old. General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had warned Donald Trump about munitions stockpiles and escalation risk, and thirteen nights of bombing stopped; CENTCOM had already gone quiet for a night while the President weighed a larger operation. Washington gave a materiel reason for stopping. It took one Iranian salvo to start again.
Azraq had already absorbed three strikes before Wednesday. Jordanian air defences downed Iranian missiles over the base earlier in the month, and Wednesday's launch was the fourth strike there in seven weeks. What changed was the American answer rather than the geography: the previous attacks on the base drew no resumption of bombing over Iranian territory, and this one drew it inside a day.
A stockpile limit is governed by resupply schedules and cannot be waived by a decision in Washington. A retaliation can be ordered in an afternoon. Reading the two together, the constraint that broke first was the political one, and any forecast that treats the campaign as winding down for logistical reasons now has four days of evidence against it.
