President Donald Trump threatened further strikes against Iran on Monday after the first tit-for-tat military exchange in a month, as a conflict that had recently settled into an economic standoff threatened to reignite into open fighting.
Iran launched missiles overnight at two US air bases in Jordan in response to an earlier US strike on Iran’s Larak Island, where Washington said it had targeted Iranian launchers firing sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz. “We’re going to hit them hard,” Trump reportedly told Fox News, adding, “There will be a response.” A senior Iranian source told Reuters the overnight exchange, the first since late July, amounted to a “limited and contained confrontation,” but warned Tehran would respond harshly to any further attack.
Trump said US air defences had intercepted all Iranian missiles capable of causing damage, and that new US economic sanctions were having a significant impact on Iran, according to Fox News. Earlier, he had posted two AI-generated videos on social media depicting explosions at Iran’s main oil export terminal, captioned “Kharg island being blown to smithereens!!!” No such attack actually took place, and Iran dismissed the post as “laughable.” Vice President JD Vance told reporters that Trump “likes to switch it up on social media a little bit” and was simply “sending a message.”
Washington has so far largely avoided striking Iran’s major oil and gas infrastructure directly, a step Iran has warned would trigger devastating retaliation against its Gulf neighbours. Since late July, the war Trump launched alongside Israel six months ago had mostly settled into an economic standoff, with both sides betting that rival blockades around the Gulf would eventually force the other to back down.
Economic Pressure
Washington has recently intensified efforts to punish Iran and its business partners through secondary sanctions targeting third countries that purchase Iranian oil. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that Iran was “lashing out” precisely because the new sanctions were taking a real toll on its already strained economy. “They’re in shock at the state of their economy,” Bessent told reporters at a G20 finance ministers’ meeting in North Carolina. “I would think that they are lashing out kinetically because they are losing economically.”
Two Killed Overnight
US forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island Sunday, a US official said, after Revolutionary Guard forces were observed preparing to launch rockets carrying sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported three people were killed in the strike, with state-affiliated Nournews identifying two as members of the Revolutionary Guards Navy.
Larak is a small island in the strait near the strategic port of Bandar Abbas. The Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries a fifth of global crude oil and gas shipments, has remained effectively blocked since the war began. US Central Command said in a statement that it had taken “limited, precise” action against Iranian minelaying forces posing an “imminent threat” in the strait, without providing further detail. Iranian state TV separately quoted the Revolutionary Guards claiming a supertanker had caught fire and been halted after being struck by two naval mines in the strait’s southern section, a claim the US military later denied.
Trump had called off his intensive “Operation Epic Fury” bombing campaign in April with a ceasefire, and the two sides agreed in June on an interim framework for further talks. That framework collapsed, leading to repeated exchanges of fire, including two weeks of US bombing in July. Over the past month, Washington has hoped its blockade of Iranian ports would inflict enough economic damage to force Iranian compliance, while Tehran has maintained that the strait remains closed and will reopen only under its own supervision. The senior Iranian source, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said conditions in the strait would worsen further for any vessel violating Tehran’s rules for passage.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian struck a notably milder tone Monday. “We believe that continuing the war is in no one’s interest, neither ours, nor the region’s, nor humanity’s,” he said on the sidelines of a regional security meeting in Kyrgyzstan, according to Tasnim, stressing that Iran still seeks a negotiated resolution.
Trump has yet to achieve any of the objectives he set at the war’s outset: dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme, curbing its capacity to strike regional rivals, and creating conditions for Iranians to overthrow their clerical leadership.
