An Iranian missile struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on Friday, wounding at least 10 U.S. service members and damaging several refueling aircraft, according to the Associated Press. Two of the troops were seriously wounded. The attack involved both missiles and drones.
The strike came one day after President Trump said Iran had been “obliterated” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “never in recorded history has a nation’s military been so quickly and so effectively neutralized.”
U.S. Central Command said Friday that more than 300 service members have been wounded in the monthlong conflict. Thirty remain out of action. Ten are classified as seriously wounded. Thirteen have been killed, including Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, who was wounded in a March 1 attack on the same base and died days later.
Prince Sultan Air Base sits in the desert south of Riyadh. It isn’t a new name in the history of American military operations in the Gulf. After the Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran in 1996, which killed 19 Air Force personnel, the United States moved a significant share of its Saudi-based operations to Prince Sultan. The base was supposed to be safer. It was safer, for twenty-nine years.
The Trump administration has sent Iran a 15-point ceasefire proposal through Pakistani intermediaries. Iran has publicly denied that negotiations are taking place, but on Friday it agreed to facilitate humanitarian aid and agricultural shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is preparing to deploy at least 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division and roughly 5,000 Marines to the region in the coming days.
Here is a story that deserves more attention than it’s getting. Iran has established what amounts to a toll booth in the Strait of Hormuz, the AP reported. Ships entering the strait must now submit their cargo details, crew lists, and ownership information to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, receive a code, and be escorted through. Those that pay get passage. The tolls are paid in yuan.
Traffic through the strait has fallen 90 percent since the war began. Only about 150 vessels have transited since March 1, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence. That’s roughly one normal day’s traffic, stretched across almost a month. About half the ships that attempt the passage now turn off their radio identification systems before entering and don’t reappear until the other side. At least 18 ships have been hit. At least seven crew members have been killed.
Iran’s own oil keeps flowing. Its Kharg Island terminal loaded 1.6 million barrels in March, largely unchanged from before the war, according to data firm Kpler. The customers are mostly small Chinese refineries that don’t observe U.S. sanctions. Iran-affiliated vessels accounted for 90 percent of recent transits.
The Barbary states charged tribute to merchant ships in the Mediterranean for centuries before the young American republic decided it wouldn’t pay. That refusal led to the First Barbary War in 1801. The principle at stake was whether a power could claim sovereignty over international waters through force. The strait, the cargo, and the currency have changed. The question hasn’t.
Wall Street closed its worst week since the Iran war began and its fifth losing week in a row, the AP reported. The S&P 500 fell 1.7 percent Friday and now sits 8.7 percent below its January all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 793 points. The Nasdaq sank 2.1 percent.
Crude oil prices rose again. Investors fear the war will disrupt Persian Gulf energy production for longer than anyone initially expected, keeping large amounts of oil and natural gas off global markets and setting off a punishing wave of inflation. For the year, the S&P 500 is down 7 percent. The Nasdaq is down nearly 10.
TSA workers could receive their first full paychecks in more than six weeks as early as Monday, after President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the Homeland Security secretary to pay them immediately, the AP reported. TSA personnel haven’t been paid since February 14, when the Department of Homeland Security lapsed over a congressional dispute about immigration funding.
The executive order came hours after House Republicans rejected a Senate bill that would have funded TSA, the Coast Guard, and FEMA but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol.
“Until checks are actually in hands, we might still see some of these staffing issues,” said Eric Rosen, director of travel content for The Points Guy. Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer, said the officers he talks to won’t feel secure until they know the paychecks will keep coming. “This back and forth about all these decisions changing is confusing the TSA officers,” he told the AP.
The last time TSA officers worked without pay was during the 2018-2019 government shutdown, which lasted 35 days and was the longest in American history at the time. That shutdown ended on January 25, 2019, after sick-outs at airports increased to the point that LaGuardia briefly halted incoming flights. This shutdown is now longer. The airports haven’t shut down, but the lines have gotten long enough that the pressure built to the same place it always does.
Defense Secretary Hegseth intervened to block the promotions of at least six military officers, including two Black men and two women who were on track to become one-star generals, NPR confirmed. A U.S. official said Hegseth has been removing senior officers deemed ideologically incompatible.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called the reporting “fake news,” adding that “under Secretary Hegseth, military promotions are given to those who have earned them. Meritocracy, which reigns in this Department, is apolitical and unbiased.”
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he is investigating the allegations. “If these reports are accurate, Secretary Hegseth’s decision to remove four decorated officers from a promotion list after having been selected by their peers for their merit and performance is not only outrageous, it would be illegal,” Reed said. “Denying the promotions of individual officers based on their race or gender would betray every principle of merit-based service military officers uphold throughout their careers.”
And in the Caribbean Sea, a team of researchers watched something almost nobody has ever seen. A sperm whale gave birth while eleven other whales held still around her and then, for three hours afterward, took turns lifting the newborn calf to the surface so it could breathe.
The birth was captured by drone cameras and underwater microphones. The findings, published Friday in the journals Science and Scientific Reports, give the most detailed recording of a sperm whale birth ever documented, NPR reported. The mother, identified through years of field observation, is a whale named Rounder. Half the whales who helped her weren’t related to her at all.
“The behaviors that we’re seeing reflect a complex cooperative society that can’t just be explained by ‘Oh, you’re related,’” lead biologist Shane Gero told NPR. “There’s something richer there, in which they live in a society where the expectation is ‘I will help you so you will help me.’”
Eleven whales in the water. Holding still. Waiting. Then every one of them, family and stranger alike, taking turns lifting the calf so it could breathe. Scientists recorded every minute of it, and it was published on Friday in a journal called Science. The full picture includes this, too.
