US President Donald Trump yesterday promised further strikes against Iran after the first tit-for-tat attacks in a month, as a conflict that had lately settled into an economic standoff threatened to escalate into open fighting again.
Iran launched missiles overnight at two US air bases in Jordan in response to a US attack on Iran's Larak Island, where Washington said it had struck Iranian launchers firing mines into the Strait of Hormuz.
"We're going to hit them hard," a Fox News reporter quoted Trump as later telling the channel. "There will be a response."
A senior Iranian source told Reuters the overnight exchanges of fire, the first since late July, were a "limited and contained confrontation" but said Tehran would deliver a harsh response if attacked again.
Trump said US air defences had downed all Iranian missiles that could have caused any damage and that new U.S. economic sanctions on Iran were having a big impact, Fox News reported.
Earlier, Trump had posted to social media two videos depicting explosions engulfing Iran's main oil export terminal, with the message "Kharg island being blown to smithereens!!!"
But the videos were generated by AI and no such attack took place. Iran called Trump's post "laughable". Vice President JD Vance told reporters Trump "likes to switch it up on social media a little bit" and was "sending a message".
Washington has so far mainly held off from hitting Iran's major oil and gas infrastructure, a move that Iran says would be met with devastating attacks against its Gulf neighbours.
Since late July, the war that Trump launched with Israel six months ago has settled mostly into an economic standoff, with each side betting that rival blockades of shipping around the Gulf will force the other to back down.
Tehran meanwhile has maintained that the Strait of Hormuz is shut and will reopen only under its supervision.
The senior Iranian source, who has direct knowledge of Iranian decision-making and spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said conditions in the strait would "become worse" for vessels that violated rules set by Tehran for passage.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian struck a milder tone yesterday, telling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of a regional security meeting in Kyrgyzstan that Iran still sought a negotiated resolution.
"... we believe that continuing the war is in no one's interest, neither ours, nor the region's, nor humanity's," Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted him as saying.