The United States Central Command (Centcom) has announced that this Tuesday it has launched a new round of attacks against military targets in Iran, the latest sign of the return to hostilities between the two countries after a month of relative calm. The Pentagon has confirmed that the attacks began at 6 p.m. and were directed at “targets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran,” in retaliation for “recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial transport in the Strait of Hormuz and against U.S. service members deployed in the region.”
According to the Iranian news agency Irna, four projectiles have hit the counties of Chabahar and Konarak, a coastal area in southeastern Iran, as well as Qeshm Island, north of the Strait of Hormuz. It is still too early to determine the damage caused, as the bombings are still ongoing at this time, U.S. officials confirmed to Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guard told the Fars agency that the U.S. “will regret its new attacks.”
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President Donald Trump has also confirmed that the U.S. is “currently attacking Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz.” Through a post on his network, Truth Social, he described the bombings as “large and forceful” and noted that they are in “retaliation for the failed attempt by the Iranians to place naval mines in the strait,” as well as for the launch of “eight Iranian missiles against our military base in Jordan, all of which were successfully shot down.”
This new wave of attacks is the second in two days, as six months of war in the Persian Gulf have already passed. On Sunday night, the U.S. and Iran exchanged bombings: Washington launched missiles and drones against two Iranian launchers on Larak Island, located in the Strait of Hormuz, from where, according to Washington, the regime was preparing to attack new ships in this critical and contested bottleneck. Shortly after, the Islamic Republic responded with retaliatory and “punitive” bombings for the death of two Iranians, with missiles launched against two American military bases in Jordan and another airbase in the United Arab Emirates, according to confirmation from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran.
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Trump warns that if there is retaliation from the “failed nation of Iran” it will be hit “much harder”
Tuesday’s attacks are a response to this Iranian retaliation, something Trump already indicated on Monday in an interview with Fox News: “There will be a response. We are going to hit them very hard.” Hours earlier, he posted on Truth Social an AI-generated video showing Jarg Island, strategic for Iranian oil exports, being bombed, a post the president accompanied with the message: “Jarg Island has been reduced to rubble!”
On Tuesday, he again threatened the regime of the “failed nation of Iran” with even more forceful new attacks if it decides to respond to the latest bombing. “It will be hit again much harder and on a much greater scale,” he warned. “That attack is waiting behind the scenes and when it ends, very little will remain of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added.
Despite the tone, the president ruled out on Monday any use of the nuclear bomb against Iran, considering that the consequences would leave a much worse situation than the current one in the Persian Gulf region and that the Iranian regime is already “about to fall,” without the need to use such a destructive weapon.
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