U.S. President Donald Trump threatened further strikes against Iran on Monday after the first exchange of direct attacks in a month, raising tensions in a conflict that had recently shifted into an economic standoff.
Iran launched missiles overnight at two U.S. air bases in Jordan in response to a U.S. attack on Iran’s Larak Island, where Washington said it had struck Iranian launchers firing mines into the Strait of Hormuz.
“We’re going to hit them hard,” a Fox News reporter quoted Trump as later telling the channel. “There will be a response.”
Separately, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the renewed strikes did not signal a return to full-scale war, describing Iran as a “failed nation” whose economy and military had been severely degraded. “That doesn’t mean we won’t smack them. We’ll see what happens.”
Asked whether he had ruled out using nuclear weapons against Iran, Trump said there was “no reason” to do so because Iran was already “totally defeated militarily.”
A senior Iranian source told Reuters the overnight exchanges of fire, the first since late July, were a “limited and contained confrontation” but said Tehran would deliver a harsh response if attacked again.
Trump said U.S. air defences had downed all Iranian missiles that could have caused any damage and that new U.S. economic sanctions on Iran were having a big impact, Fox News reported.
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. Iran called Trump’s post “laughable”. Vice President JD Vance told reporters Trump “likes to switch it up on social media a little bit” and was “sending a message”.
Washington has so far mainly held off from hitting Iran’s major oil and gas infrastructure, a move that Iran says would be met with devastating attacks against its Gulf neighbours.
PILING ON ECONOMIC PRESSURE
Washington has, instead, stepped up efforts to punish Tehran and its business partners with “secondary sanctions” that hit third countries buying its oil.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Iran was “lashing out” now because the new sanctions were taking a toll on its 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.”
Bessent told Reuters on Sunday that new secondary sanctions were likely to be unveiled weekly in the effort to pressure Iran, with an initial focus on banks.
US HIT IRANIAN ISLAND IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ
U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday, a U.S. official said, after “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz”.
Three people were killed in the U.S. attack, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported. The state-affiliated Nournews said two of them had been identified as members of the Revolutionary Guards Navy.
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 and gas shipments, has been effectively blocked since the start of the war.
In a statement, the U.S. Central Command said it had taken “limited, precise” action against minelaying forces of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that posed an “imminent threat” in the strait. It gave no details.
Iranian state TV quoted the Revolutionary Guards as saying a supertanker had caught fire and been brought to a halt after being struck by two naval mines in the south of the strait. The U.S. military later denied the claim.
