DUBAI -- Iran took a shot at U.S. Gulf ally Bahrain for the first time in two months overnight, firing drones at a radar facility in an escalation of the low intensity skirmishing in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, said Iran launched two drones and that American forces shot both down without injury or damage.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed the attack early Friday, saying it targeted an American early warning radar.
It was the first known attack on the small Gulf country since early September. Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, didn't respond to requests for comment and issued no public warning of the attack.
Bahrain has been repeatedly pummeled by Iran during the war, now in its ninth month, but has had a respite since President Trump settled into a strategy of squeezing Iran economically.
Trump has signaled that he doesn't want to return to major combat. Still, the U.S. and Iran have been skirmishing over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway.
U.S. forces have quietly carried out a series of strikes in recent weeks on Iranian sites including Qeshm Island, which sits along much of the strait's hairpin turn. The island is home to a major Revolutionary Guard naval facility. The group uses the island to launch drones and missiles.
U.S. and Gulf officials have said the strikes are designed to stop Iran from attacking ships in the waterway. Trump has played down the significance of the strikes, calling them minor.
Iran is reciprocating. On Tuesday, Iranian state media said that Tehran had hit a small Omani island of Didamar that aids the navigation of ships transiting the waterway. The rocky, uninhabited outcrop is typically seen as the entry and exit point to the Persian Gulf. It has navigational equipment and a lighthouse built by the U.K. in 1914.
The U.S. military also is running near-daily operations from warships and land bases to help commercial vessels move in and out of the Persian Gulf, helping oil exports from the region reach levels near where they were at the start of the war.
Iranian state media routinely report the sound of explosions along the coast.
Trump has said he wants to stick with the current economic pressure campaign. Analysts warn the expensive military effort isn't sustainable and that Iran will likely escalate to pressure the U.S. to end the chokehold.
Regional mediators continue to work to find a formula that might offer a diplomatic exit from the standoff. The war is squeezing their economies and putting valuable Infrastructure at risk, but they also fear the U.S. could walk away and leave them to fend with an angered Iran.
The U.S. and Iranian negotiating positions have toughened since they reached a deal over the summer that quickly fell apart.