The U.S. has carried out what it called “self-defense” airstrikes against Iran, threatening a fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran.
The strikes targeted missile launch sites and mine-laying boats in the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil passageway in the Middle East that Iran has effectively closed amid the war, according to the U.S. Central Command.
“U.S. forces conducted self-defense strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” CENTCOM spokesperson Tim Hawkins told the media Monday evening.
“Targets included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines,” the captain added.
Two Iranian boats were caught laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a senior US official told Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin.
“The US military eliminated both IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] vessels and also struck at a SAM (surface to air missile) site in Bandar Abbas that was targeting US warplanes,” Griffin wrote in an X post.
Bandar Abbas is a city located on the coast of the Strait of Hormuz and is home to a key Iranian naval base.
Iranian state media also reported explosions in other cities, according to CNN’s Brianna Keilar.
While two of Griffin’s sources said the strikes do not indicate the ceasefire is broken, it’s the latest example of the fraught relationship between the U.S. and Iran amid the nearly three-month war.
The Independent has reached out to the White House and the Defense Department for comment.
Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier Monday that negotiations to end the Iran war were “proceeding nicely.”
He warned that a peace agreement must “only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!”
Trump said he spoke to the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain and said that “after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords.”
The Abraham Accords were a series of agreements brokered by the U.S. in Trump’s first term to normalize relations with Israel. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were the first countries to join the accords.
When the U.S. and Israel began to launch strikes against Iran at the end of February, Trump had claimed Tehran posed an imminent threat to Americans with its nuclear ambitions.
On Monday, Trump vowed in a separate Truth Social post that any buried enriched uranium in Iran, which he calls nuclear dust, “will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed,” eradicated in Iran or “at another acceptable location”.
