Iran launched ballistic missiles at U.S. military installations in Jordan late Tuesday and U.S. and Saudi warplanes struck Iran-backed militia sites across seven Iraqi provinces hours later, shattering a four-day lull in the Middle East war and drawing Baghdad and Riyadh directly into a conflict that began in February.

The exchange ended the longest halt in fighting since President Trump ordered the first American strikes on Iran five months ago, and marked the first time Saudi Arabia has publicly joined a U.S. combat operation in the war. Brent crude rose more than 4 percent overnight, the Iraqi presidency condemned the U.S.-Saudi strikes as a "flagrant violation of Iraq's sovereignty," and the fighting widened during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the White House.

Jordan strike

U.S. Central Command said Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired the missiles at 5:45 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday in what it called an "attempted surprise attack" and that all were intercepted. Jordan's military separately said its air defenses shot down five missiles. Neither Amman nor Centcom identified the targeted sites. Jordan hosts about 4,000 U.S. troops at installations including the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base and Tower 22, a remote logistics outpost near the Syrian and Iraqi borders. Three U.S. service members were killed in an earlier Iranian strike on a base in Jordan, CBS News reported.

The IRGC said the salvo targeted a U.S. air base and command center in Jordan "in response to the acts of aggression of the American child-killing army," according to Iranian state media. Iranian naval forces separately struck three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, the IRGC said, after the ships ignored warnings and continued along what the guard called an "unsafe and illegal route."

Iraq strikes

Hours later, U.S. and Saudi fighter jets hit what Centcom described as "multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq." Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces, the state-sanctioned umbrella of mostly Shia militias that includes several Iran-backed units, said at least 20 of its fighters were killed and 32 wounded in attacks on headquarters in Baghdad, Wasit, Nineveh, Basra, Kirkuk, Karbala and Diyala. Centcom said the operation was a response to more than 30 IRGC-directed drone attacks on U.S. forces and Saudi energy infrastructure over the previous 72 hours.

Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi defense ministry, said the kingdom had acted under its "right to self-defence" after drones launched from Iraqi territory hit oil facilities in Riyadh and the country's east. Saudi Arabia had not previously acknowledged offensive operations in the five-month war.

Baghdad's objection

The strikes drew a sharp rebuke from the Iraqi capital. The Iraqi presidency called the joint operation "an unacceptable attack and a flagrant violation of Iraq's sovereignty" that had targeted "official security institutions," in a statement reported by CBS News. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi convened an emergency meeting of the Ministerial Council for National Security on Wednesday and is scheduled to travel to Riyadh on Thursday, Al Jazeera reported.

An Iranian defense official quoted by state television and reported by Reuters denied any Iranian role in the drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities, warning that U.S. and Saudi attribution was a "major miscalculation." The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a self-described armed group backed by Iran, dismissed Saudi claims as "fabrications" and warned that "any foolish Saudi action will be met with a harsh response," according to Al Jazeera.

Markets and diplomacy

Brent crude rose 4.3 percent to $87.70 a barrel in early Asian trading and West Texas Intermediate climbed 4.2 percent to $82.62, according to BBC News. The moves reversed a sell-off that began Monday, when Brent had fallen below $88 as the pause entered its third night. Iranian state television said a U.S. strike hit an area near Piranshahr in northwestern Iran, on the Iraqi border, though provincial officials cited by the Fars news agency said the missile fell on uninhabited ground and caused no casualties.

The escalation coincided with Netanyahu's hour-long meeting with Trump at the White House. A senior Israeli source told CBS News the session was "extremely positive" and that the two leaders "reaffirmed their ironclad commitment to ensuring that Iran never has nuclear weapons." Trump earlier told Fox News that a supposed Iranian nuclear site called Pickaxe Mountain was "not a big problem" and dismissed Netanyahu's public alarm about it. Pentagon data cited by the BBC show at least 624 U.S. service members have been wounded since Trump ordered strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

Counterpoint

The near-term outcome most analysts expect is neither escalation into open regional war nor a rapid return to the 60-day memorandum of understanding on talks that Iran and the United States signed last month, said Burcu Ozcelik, a senior Middle East security fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. What she called the "real danger" was "a prolonged period of sustained confrontation, where regular military exchanges become the norm rather than the exception," in remarks to Al Jazeera. The Iraqi presidency's condemnation and Iran's denial that it directed the drone attacks together undercut the U.S.-Saudi framing of the strikes as narrow self-defense, and leave Baghdad's own security forces exposed on both sides of the fight.

Al-Zaidi's Thursday trip to Riyadh will test whether Baghdad can insulate itself from a war the U.S. and Saudi Arabia say the militias inside its own borders started.