The US military carried out another wave of strikes on Iran on Wednesday, hours after President Donald Trump said that an interim agreement to end the war was “over”.
Iranian state media reported explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz; in Sirik, another southern coastal city; and the south-western Bushehr province, home to Iran’s nuclear-power-plant complex.
Alongside a picture purporting to be an explosion in Chabahar, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!”
US Central Command confirmed the strikes, posting on X: “At the direction of the Commander in Chief, US Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway.”
Wednesday night’s strikes were expected to be bigger than those carried out on Tuesday, an unnamed US official told Reuters.
Iranian state TV reported that further explosions were heard on Abu Musa Island. The island is one of three small islands claimed by the United Arab Emirates which provide the backbone of Iran’s control of the strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that the attacks on Bushehr province in southern Iran did not cause damage to the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
The US senator Bernie Sanders said of Trump’s action: “Restarting his reckless war with Iran won’t make America stronger. It will cost more lives and waste more taxpayer dollars.” In a post on X, Sanders added that “after getting the United States into a war based on lies, Trump has now declared the ceasefire with Iran ‘over’ after less than a month”.
On Tuesday the US hit a variety of military sites and port facilities after Iran’s targeting of several merchant vessels off the coast of Oman.
Earlier at the Nato summit in Ankara, Trump said that the US would “probably hit [Iran] hard again tonight”, and later added the latest strikes would not result in “long-term” military action.
“Anything that happens is going to happen very fast,” Trump said, though he also suggested the US military might “just finish the job”.
Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, the US president said the strikes were continued retaliation for Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the strait of Hormuz.
“They are behaving very badly,” he said, accusing the country of launching drones and a missile at ships.
Iran has asserted that the interim ceasefire deal gives it the right to manage traffic through the strait.
Its parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a key negotiator in talks over a permanent end to the war, wrote on X: “The era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We don’t fold.”
