The US launched a second, larger strike wave overnight Wednesday into Thursday, ~2 hours starting around 10pm ET, hitting Iranian territory directly again after the Jul 28-29 exchange had stayed confined to proxy militia sites in Iraq. CENTCOM said the strikes targeted IRGC command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance sites, and maritime capabilities across six southern provinces along the Hormuz littoral: Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, Abadan, Bushehr, Kazerun, and Farashband.

The target set maps onto the infrastructure Iran would use to contest the Strait of Hormuz: command nodes, anti-ship missile batteries, and naval assets clustered at IRGC Navy bases in Bandar Abbas and Qeshm. Hitting all of these categories at once, in a single wave, reads as a deliberate effort to degrade Iran's capacity to close or contest the strait, not an isolated retaliatory strike.

The IRGC vowed to "punish the aggressor" and warned that nations "aiding" the US face a "harsh response," a threat that extends beyond US forces to Gulf host states. It separately claimed "full control" of the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state media claims of three civilians killed on Qeshm and of Hormuz tankers turned back under US escort remain single-sourced and unconfirmed by CENTCOM or UKMTO.

Watch for Iranian retaliatory fire at US or partner military and energy sites in the Gulf over the next 24-48 hours, and for any independent corroboration of activity near Hormuz.