Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said early on Friday, November 13, that its Aerospace Force had struck and destroyed a United States military early-warning radar in Bahrain, in what it called a direct response to an enemy air attack on a telecommunications tower in Sirik, on Iran's southern coast near the Strait of Hormuz.

Source: PressTV, Nov 13, 2026

"In response to the enemy's aerial aggression against a telecommunications tower in Sirik, IRGC Aerospace Force fighters targeted and destroyed the American aggressors' early-warning radar on the island of Bahrain a few hours ago," the Guards said in a statement carried by the Guards-affiliated Fars news agency and the semi-official Tasnim news agency, according to a translation by Iran International.

Source: The Insight International (Iran International translation), Nov 13, 2026

The strike on Sirik came a day earlier. Iran's state news agency IRNA reported on Thursday, citing official sources, that Sirik county in Hormozgan province, on the Strait of Hormuz, had been hit in an enemy attack, after explosions were heard in the area. IRNA did not say who carried out the strike, what exactly was hit beyond the telecommunications tower later named by the Guards, or whether anyone was hurt, and the United States has not claimed any strike on Sirik.

Source: IRNA via The Daily Jagran, Nov 13, 2026

According to the Reuters news agency, it is the first time since early September that Iran has claimed an attack on US military assets in a Gulf country. Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and the Guards have repeatedly claimed strikes on US radar and air defence systems in the kingdom during the war, including in July; in June they said they had hit the air base used in an earlier attack on a communications tower in Sirik.

Source: Reuters, syndicated Nov 12, 2026

The Guards called the Bahrain operation "a serious warning" to end what they described as aerial provocations and oil smuggling in the Strait of Hormuz, said their aerospace force was on full alert for an unrestricted response if attacks were repeated, and warned that companies they accused of being misled by the United States would face more severe punishment. Hours earlier, Jamal Shakerami, an adviser at the Guards' Imam Ali Security Headquarters, had said all US bases had become "accessible targets" for Iran's armed forces, IRNA reported.

Source: The Insight International, Nov 13, 2026

Background: an eight-month war, a blockade and a strait under strain

The claim lands in the eighth month of the war the United States and Israel launched on Iran on February 28, 2026. The US military is imposing a blockade on Iranian ports while attempting to secure safe passage for international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that normally carries about one-fifth of the world's oil. Hours before the Guards' statement, Iran's military said four oil tankers had been hit by explosions in the strait in two days after ignoring warnings — a separate Iranian claim that Reuters could not immediately verify.

Source: Reuters, Nov 12, 2026

The tankers claim was reported separately by this desk earlier on Thursday. IRGC says two supertankers disabled by explosions in Hormuz

It also lands hours after President Donald Trump publicly stepped back from diplomacy: on Thursday he wrote that the United States does not need a deal with Iran — "We've got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we've got their Strait" — and directed Vice President JD Vance, until then the lead negotiator, to focus instead on alleged crime and corruption in Democratic-run cities and states. In a separate phone interview with the Salem News Channel the same day, Trump warned that anyone in Iran responsible for killing a US official, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, "will not exist any longer", ANI reported. Trump also said Gulf allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had pressed him to hold off on further large-scale attacks on Iran.

Source: ANI via Daily Prabhat, Nov 13, 2026

Trump's no-deal post and the Vance decision were reported by this desk earlier on Thursday. Trump says US does not need Iran deal, directs Vance to domestic focus

Markets reacted within the hour. Bitcoin fell below $70,000 to $69,000 early on Friday, its lowest level since August 19, and exchanges liquidated more than $1.3 billion in cryptocurrency futures positions over 24 hours; CoinDesk reported the sell-off accelerated amid reports of the renewed Middle East escalation, alongside a strong US dollar. WTI crude oil continued to trade around $88 a barrel, down slightly from Thursday's high of $89.15.

Source: CoinDesk, Nov 12, 2026

For the Gulf's large Punjabi and Indian workforce — in Bahrain, which hosts the Fifth Fleet headquarters, and across the Gulf states that line the strait — a renewed Iran-US exchange is the risk they have lived with since February: any wider round of strikes on Gulf military sites puts the cities and workplaces around those bases back in the line of fire, and further disruption in Hormuz hits the shipping and energy jobs many of them hold. No casualties among foreign workers were reported in connection with the Sirik or Bahrain claims.

Source: Reuters, syndicated Nov 12, 2026

What happens next: the claim now waits on Washington and Manama. A US or Bahraini confirmation, denial or response would decide whether this becomes the first confirmed Iranian strike on US assets in the Gulf since early September — and whether the cycle that began with the Sirik tower attack draws a US reply against Iran, after a Thursday on which Trump simultaneously said a deal was not needed and that his Gulf allies had asked him to hold off on large-scale attacks.