TEHRAN, Iran: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed it had struck and destroyed a second US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in West Asia, as fighting between Iran, the United States and Israel intensified across the region.
The IRGC, in a statement carried by official Sepah News, said it hit the system with precision-guided missiles.
The Guard said it had on Monday destroyed the radar of a US THAAD system stationed at a military base in the United Arab Emirates.
“The destruction of the anti-missile systems has provided our forces with greater freedom to successfully hit their targets,” the statement said as reported by Xinhua news agency.
There was no confirmation from Washington or the United Arab Emirates.
Escalation after US-Israeli strikes
The latest claims come after Israel and the United States launched joint attacks early on Saturday on Tehran and several other Iranian cities.
Iranian authorities say the strikes killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, members of his family, and senior military commanders.
Tehran has responded with several waves of missile and drone attacks targeting Israel and US bases in the region.
On Tuesday, the IRGC said it had targeted positions of what it described as “hostile counter-revolutionary” groups based in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
It said the groups had been planning to infiltrate Iranian territory and carry out attacks.
Iran’s army also said its air defences shot down six Israeli Hermes drones over the past 24 hours in the provinces of Isfahan, Kermanshah, East Azerbaijan, Khuzestan and Tehran.
It added that since the start of the war, Iranian armed forces had downed 35 “advanced drones” belonging to what it called the “aggressive enemies”.
Meanwhile, Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces denied reports that it had attacked Oman’s territory or ports, according to the official news agency IRNA.
Iranian warship sunk
The conflict has also extended into the Indian Ocean.
At least 80 people were killed after a US submarine torpedoed and sank an Iranian warship, Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister told local television.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed at a Pentagon briefing that an American submarine had sunk “an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters”.
“Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Hegseth said, describing it as the first time since World War Two that a US submarine had sunk an enemy ship in this manner. He did not name the vessel.
Earlier, Sri Lanka’s navy said it had received a distress call from the Iranian navy ship IRIS Dena, which later sank about 40 kilometres south of the island nation.
A Sri Lankan navy spokesperson said the ship’s documents indicated around 180 crew members were on board.
The navy rescued 32 critically injured sailors after receiving the distress call at dawn. If the casualty figures provided by the deputy foreign minister and the navy are confirmed, around 68 people remain unaccounted for.
Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told parliament that the rescued sailors were transported to a hospital in Galle, about 115 kilometres south of Colombo. Police increased security at the facility following their arrival.
A defence official told AFP that hopes of finding further survivors were diminishing.
“We are keeping up a search, but we don’t know yet what happened to the rest of the crew,” the official said.
Sri Lanka deployed two naval vessels and an aircraft as part of the rescue effort.
Navy spokesman Buddhika Sampath said the country was acting within its designated search and rescue area in the Indian Ocean.
“We responded to the distress call under our international obligations, as this is within our search and rescue area,” Sampath told AFP.
Pentagon vows more attacks
At the Pentagon, Hegseth described the results of US operations over the past four days as “incredible, historic really”.
“They are toast, and they know it,” he said, referring to Iran’s leadership.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it’s not a fair fight,” he added. “More and larger waves are coming. We are just getting started.”
Hegseth said US forces would “begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory”, echoing remarks by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, who appeared alongside him.
He dismissed Russia and China as factors in US decision-making on Iran.
“I don’t have a message for them, and they’re not really a factor here, and our issue is not with them,” he said, adding that the focus was on ending what he called Iran’s “nuclear ambitions”.
Moscow and Beijing have criticised the US-Israeli military campaign.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force said it had dropped more than 5,000 munitions on Iran since the conflict began on Saturday, with a particular focus on the Tehran area.
In a statement on social media, the Israel Defence Forces said it had identified missiles launched from Iran towards Israel and that defence systems were operating to intercept them.
