The US launched new airstrikes on Iranian targets on Tuesday, quashing hopes that an exchange of fire last weekend might not presage a wider renewal of hostilities. Oil prices had already risen after that first exchange of direct attacks since July and after reports of two tankers being hit leaving the strait of Hormuz, the global oil supply waterway that Iran has effectively closed to shipping. Tehran remained defiant, warning that it would prevent oil being exported from the Gulf, despite a threat by Donald Trump to hit Iran “hard” in response to the renewed Iranian strikes, and a warning from Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, that Washington was about to impose new sanctions.
ET (1600 GMT), U.S. forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in Iran,” US Central Command posted on X. The state-linked news agency Nour News said there had been reports of explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas and in Chabahar, a port on the southern coast. The six-month conflict had shifted into an economic standoff before the weekend strikes, in which US forces attacked Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday and Iran responded by launching missiles at two US airbases in Jordan.
Although he warned of a US response to the Iranian strikes, the US president also told reporters on Monday that they did not signal a return to full-scale war, and a senior Iranian source told they were a “limited and contained confrontation”. However, Trump made dire threats against Tehran on social media. He warned that if Iran retaliates against the US’s latest strikes, “they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The ominous last part of Trump’s message was starkly reminiscent of threats the US president has made in the past that could amount to war crimes if carried out, including threatening to destroy critical civilian infrastructure such as power plants and bridges, threatening to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”, and an April threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if a peace deal wasn’t reached. In Iran, the Fars news agency quoted an IRGC spokesperson as saying the US “will regret its new attacks”. More recently pledges by both sides to respond to further attacks have highlighted how quickly a conflict that has increasingly been fought through sanctions, blockades and economic pressure could spill back into military action.
Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, had said early on Tuesday that Tehran would reciprocate immediately if Washington honoured its commitments under a June memorandum of understanding (MOU) that was intended to halt the conflict. The MOU declared an end to fighting that has now killed thousands in Iran and Lebanon since US and Israeli strikes began on 28 February. But it also deferred many of the most difficult issues and paved the way for a broader 60-day negotiation period – which passed without further agreement.
But Iranian officials have shown no public sign of bowing to pressure. If the US intensified its “siege”, he said Tehran would respond militarily. Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told a press conference in Tehran that Washington was “addicted to making excessive demands and has mistaken negotiations for dictating terms”.
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