President Donald Trump yesterday said Iran would “pay” for killing US soldiers after multiple service members were killed over the weekend as part of the United States’ war against Iran.
The number of US troops killed in the war on Iran rose to 17 over the weekend, with the remains of an additional service member being examined. Two of the personnel were confirmed to have been killed when Iran attacked US personnel in Jordan.
“Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine.” The weekend was one of the deadliest ones for US troops since the war started in February.
In the past week, Trump has threatened to expand the targets being struck in Iran to include energy plants and bridges, sending ground forces to seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil hub and bombing a deep-underground nuclear-linked site known as Pickaxe Mountain. Sources have told Reuters that recent waves of US strikes on Iran aimed at forcing open the Strait of Hormuz are also targeting Iranian military capabilities the US would want to destroy before executing more complex operations against Iran.
The war, including its monetary cost, is set to dominate a congressional hearing today with Hegseth and Caine.
There are signs from both Iran and the US that they wanted to resume diplomatic efforts to end an escalating cycle of attacks that has all but wrecked a fragile interim agreement signed last month.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters yesterday that Tehran had received a proposal from mediators for a 10-day ceasefire in an effort to salvage the interim deal, intended to pave the way to a lasting agreement to the war that began on February 28 with U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.
Separately, two Pakistani government sources said Iran’s Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, making his second visit to Islamabad in less than a week, had asked Pakistan to resume its mediation role in Iran’s conflict with the United States.
The diplomatic flurry came after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had struck Gulf region following another night of US bombardment of Iranian cities.
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