Truce faces test as US and Iran exchange strikes
The United States attacked Iranian territory Thursday, testing a tenuous month-old ceasefire, even as Iranian officials said the two countries were discussing a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.
Neither side has reverted to all-out war, but after a period of relative calm, the attacks have begun to intensify since the United Arab Emirates, an American ally, accused Iran of firing missiles and drones at its territory Monday and Tuesday.
On Wednesday, a U.S. Navy warplane disabled an Iranian-flagged oil tanker that had ignored repeated warnings not to cross the American blockade, U.S. Central Command said.
On Thursday, the fighting escalated as Iran fired missiles and drones and launched small boats to attack three U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz, according to the U.S. military. Iran said it was retaliating for the disabling of the oil tanker, which it said was a violation of the ceasefire.
U.S. forces thwarted the attacks, Central Command said, and then responded by targeting “Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking U.S. forces, including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance nodes.”
Explosions shook Qeshm Island and the port city of Bandar Abbas, both shipping centers on the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the capital, Tehran, according to Iranian news media and citizens posting on social media.
Two senior Iranian officials, who asked not to be named because they were discussing sensitive information, said Bahman pier, a shipbuilding facility on Qeshm, and an Air Force base in Bandar Abbas had been attacked.
In Tehran, the Iranian capital, several residents described fears that the war had started again even though President Donald Trump had just said a day earlier that the two sides were having “very good talks” and “it’s very possible we’ll make a deal.”
American officials denied that the ceasefire was over.
The U.S. military “does not seek escalation but remains positioned and ready to protect American forces,” Central Command said.
Rachel Scott, an ABC News reporter, said that Trump told her in a phone call Thursday that the American strikes were “just a love tap.”
“The ceasefire is going,” Trump told her. “It’s in effect.”
But Trump, in a post on social media, also threatened Iran with further attacks.
“We’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!” he wrote on Truth Social.
The escalating attacks raised the threat that the ceasefire could break down completely amid what had appeared to be a burst of diplomatic activity.
On Thursday, three Iranian officials said that negotiators from Tehran and Washington were debating a one-page proposal for the United States to lift its blockade on Iranian ships and ports, for Iran to reopen the strait to commercial traffic and for both sides to end the fighting. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. U.S. officials did not respond to requests for comment on the negotiations.
The key stumbling block centered on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the Iranians said.
The United States wants Iran to agree in principle to hand over its entire stockpile and suspend its enrichment program for 20 years, the officials said. Iran instead has proposed diluting some of the uranium, sending the rest to a third country, possibly Russia, and suspending its program for a shorter time — 10 to 15 years.
Business leaders, consumers, politicians, shipping companies and many others around the world had been watching closely for signs of a breakthrough. The conflict, which has dragged into a third month and prompted Iran and the United States to implement rival blockades around the Strait of Hormuz, has choked off a major oil transit route, wreaking havoc on global supply chains and causing energy prices to spike.
As fighting has flared in and around Iran, a parallel ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel has been battling Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, has also been tested by repeated attacks by both sides.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said that it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs a day earlier, the first attack near the Lebanese capital since the ceasefire took effect last month.
The attack killed the commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan force, the group’s elite commando unit, the Israeli military said. Hezbollah has not commented on the strike, which hit an apartment building in the Dahiyeh, the densely populated residential and commercial area where Hezbollah holds sway.
The timing of the strike near Beirut was especially delicate. Envoys from Israel and Lebanon, whose government does not control Hezbollah, are scheduled to hold another round of talks in Washington next Thursday and Friday, according to the State Department, as the Trump administration attempts to turn the ceasefire into a more durable arrangement.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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