President Donald Trump yesterday promised further strikes against Iran after the first tit-for-tat attacks in a month, as a conflict that had lately settled into an economic standoff threatened to escalate into open fighting again.
Iran launched missiles overnight at two US air bases in Jordan in response to a US attack on Iran’s Larak Island, where Washington said it had struck Iranian launchers firing mines into the Strait of Hormuz, as reported in yesterday’s GDN.
“We’re going to hit them hard,” Fox News quoted Trump as later telling the channel. “There will be a response.”
Trump said US air defences had downed all Iranian missiles that could have caused any damage and that new US economic sanctions on Iran were having a big impact, it reported.
A US official said forces had attacked Iranian launchers on Larak Island after ‘Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz’.
Larak is a small island in the Strait near the strategic Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
The Strait of Hormuz, which normally handles a fifth of global crude oil shipments, has been effectively blocked since the start of the war.
In a statement, the US Central Command said it took ‘limited, precise’ action against minelaying forces of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that posed an ‘imminent threat’ in the Strait. It gave no details.
As well as attacking the US bases in Jordan, Iran’s army said it had also targeted the UAE early yesterday.
The UAE defence ministry said its air force engaged a drone that had come from Iran over its territorial waters.
The Jordan strikes targeted US bases used to launch and support the attack on Larak, Iran’s foreign ministry said.
The Revolutionary Guards used air defence missiles to shoot down a US drone that crashed in Gulf waters, the Mehr news agency said, citing a statement from the elite force.
A supertanker caught fire and was brought to a complete halt after being struck by two naval mines in the southern Strait of Hormuz, Iran state TV said, citing a Guards’ statement.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Iran was ‘lashing out’ now because the new sanctions were taking a toll on its already battered economy.
“They’re in shock at the state of their economy,” Bessent told reporters at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in North Carolina.
“I would think that they are lashing out kinetically because they are losing economically.”
Earlier, Trump had posted to social media two videos depicting explosions engulfing Iran’s main oil export terminal, with the message ‘Kharg island being blown to smithereens!!!’
But the videos were generated by AI and no such attack took place.
Vice President JD Vance told reporters Trump ‘likes to switch it up on social media a little bit’ and was ‘sending a message’.
Trump has yet to achieve the objectives he set out at the start of the war: dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme, curbing its ability to attack regional rivals and creating conditions for Iranians to overthrow their clerical rulers.
Bessent told Reuters on Sunday new secondary sanctions were likely to be unveiled weekly in the effort to pressure Iran, with an initial focus on banks.
The European Union said yesterdayit would continue to work with the US and others to maintain economic pressure on Iran.
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