The United States and Iran traded a new round of strikes early Thursday, bringing the two sides closer to a return to all-out war.
President Trump had vowed on Wednesday to keep up military pressure on Tehran because Iranian leaders were taking “too long to negotiate.”
The American attack began shortly after midnight in Tehran, according to the U.S. military’s Central Command. Explosions were heard in Qeshm near the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the southern cities of Bandar Abbas, Minab and Sirik, Iranian news outlets reported.
Central Command said just after 4:30 a.m. in Iran that its latest strikes had concluded. Mr. Trump had told a Fox News reporter hours earlier that American strikes would resume the following night if Tehran did not capitulate in negotiations to end the war that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February.
Iran said it had responded with two waves of attacks on targets at U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, but there was no immediate confirmation of that. Iran also said that the Strait of Hormuz was now closed to any type of vessel, including oil tankers and commercial ships. The U.S. military denied that the strait was closed.
Kuwait’s military said on Thursday morning that it was intercepting hostile targets, and the country’s civil aviation authority briefly closed Kuwaiti airspace citing a possible risk to civilian aircraft. Warning sirens were activated in Bahrain, the country’s interior ministry said, without saying what had triggered them.
The latest exchange of fire followed U.S. strikes roughly 24 hours earlier, in which the U.S. military said that its jets had hit multiple Iranian targets in response to the downing of an American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Iran responded by launching its own strikes on U.S. targets in the region.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear that the new strikes were meant not as retaliation for a particular military action but to pressure Tehran to agree to peace on terms agreeable to Mr. Trump.
“If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters in Tampa, Fla.
The U.S. strikes appear to contradict Mr. Trump’s repeated reassurances that a peace deal with Iran is imminent. They also further undercut the credibility of the cease-fire declared two months ago, after which U.S. and Iranian forces traded occasional attacks and issued almost daily contradictory claims about the fighting and peace talks.
The claimed cease-fire “is more like a lesser-fire, as we have seen with the escalating attacks and rhetoric over the last 48 hours,” António Guterres, the United Nations’ secretary general, said on Wednesday.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
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Iran water tanks: A New York Times analysis of satellite images and photographs suggests that a precision U.S. attack early Wednesday hit drinking-water facilities in Iran’s southern Hormozgan Province, where temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week. A local official said water service had been cut off for some 12 hours to about 20,000 people. U.S. Central Command did not respond to a request for comment on the report of the strike. Read more ›
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Not-so-secret mission: Mr. Trump described a clandestine mission that involved spiriting millions of barrels of oil right through the Strait of Hormuz under Iran’s nose. But a U.S. military official said that the comments, made from the Oval Office and broadcast on live television, referred to a previously reported U.S. effort to steer commercial vessels through the strait. Read more ›
