WASHINGTON/DUBAI--The United States launched strikes against Iran on Tuesday after President Donald Trump said Tehran had shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz, deepening doubts over a potential peace deal and further straining a fragile ceasefire.
The U.S. military said on X it had targeted Iranian air defense, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Central Command described the operation as a “proportional response” to recent attacks on U.S. forces and commercial shipping. "I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that's what this one is," Trump told ABC News. The strikes began at 5 p.m. ET, and Central Command posted just before 9 p.m. ET that they had ended. Iran's state media reported that Qeshm island and the port city of Sirik in the Strait of Hormuz were attacked. Sounds of explosions were heard in nearby Bandar Abbas, and later in the vicinity of Jask county, near the entrance to the strait, Iranian media reported, citing local sources and residents.
Some U.S. bases in the region were targeted in response to the strikes, Iranian media cited the country's top joint military command, Khatam al-Anbiya, as saying. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they attacked the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain with drones and threatened "more severe responses" if hostilities continued, according to media. Bahrain's Interior Ministry said a warning siren had been sounded and urged the public to head to safety. Air defences had repelled Iranian attacks, a media adviser to Bahrain's King said soon after in a post on X. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports. Oil prices climbed about 1% in early Asian trade on Wednesday following the escalation in hostilities. The Apache was brought down by a one-way Iranian attack drone, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two U.S. pilots involved in the helicopter incident were uninjured, according to Trump. Iran's state media cited a military source as saying that no offensive air military operations had been conducted in the Strait of Hormuz in the previous 24 hours.
Following the initial U.S. strikes, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi posted on X that the country would "leave no attack or threat unanswered." In an earlier post, he did not directly address the helicopter incident, but said foreign forces in the region risked being involved in accidents or crossfire. "To reduce risk, best solution is for them to leave," he wrote. Iran and Israel exchanged airstrikes earlier this week, killing two people in Tehran. Trump told The Wall Street Journal during a phone call on Tuesday that the helicopter incident "wasn’t a big deal" and stressed that “the pilot is fine." However, the episode could well add further strain to efforts to broker a peace deal to end the wider Middle East war and reopen Hormuz, a vital conduit for petroleum and other commodities.
