WASHINGTON/DUBAI: The fragile lull since late July broke on Sunday. US President Donald Trump was quoted on Monday as promising to "hit them hard" after Tehran launched missiles overnight at two US air bases in Jordan in response to a US attack on Iran's Larak Island.
"We're going to hit them hard," a Fox News reporter quoted Trump as telling the channel. "There will be a response."
A senior Iranian source described the overnight hostilities between the US and Iran, the first since late July, as a "limited and contained confrontation" but added that Tehran would deliver a harsh response if attacked again.
The escalation chain began with what US Central Command called a "limited, precise" action against mine-laying forces of Iran's Revolutionary Guards that posed an "imminent threat" in the Strait of Hormuz. US forces on Sunday struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island, a US official said, after Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait.
In response, Iran's army said it had struck the Al Minhad air base in the United Arab Emirates early on Monday. However, the UAE's defence ministry dismissed that report as false.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian struck a milder tone, saying his country still sought a negotiated resolution.
"... we are still trying to achieve an agreement and understanding, and 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.
Washington has stepped up efforts to punish Tehran and its business partners with costly secondary sanctions, with diplomacy in stalemate six months into a war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, echoing Trump, said on Monday the resumed exchanges of fire showed that Iran was "lashing out" now because the new sanctions were taking a heavy toll on its already battered economy. "They're taking it very seriously... they're in shock at the state of their economy," Bessent told reporters at a meeting of G20 finance ministers in North Carolina. "I would think that they are lashing out kinetically because they are losing economically."
Trump also said US air defences had shot down all Iranian missiles that could have caused any damage and said that tough new economic sanctions on Iran were having a big impact.
In a parallel provocation, Trump annoyed Iran overnight by posting on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated video clip that he said showed Iran's oil hub Kharg Island being "blown to smithereens!!" There was no evidence of any such attack and a US official said on Monday the military had not targeted Kharg Island in overnight strikes. An Iranian official dismissed Trump's post as "laughable."
On the ground in Iran, people drove past a billboard depicting Trump on a building in Tehran on Monday - a sign of how information war and real war now mix.
In a separate disclosure, a new US missile appears to have left a wide path of destruction. Touted by its manufacturer as the ballistic missile of the future - lethal, long-range and pinpoint - Lockheed Martin's Precision Strike Missile has the US military investing billions to update its arsenal.
But a close look at what is believed to be its first use in combat — on the first day of the Iran war — highlights the potential peril of deploying this weapon near population centers because it appears to spray pellets over a wide area, according to a review by the conflict monitor Airwars and interviews with weapons experts and former defence officials.
Three missiles that struck the southern city of Lamerd on February 28 killed 28 civilians as far as 50 meters from where they detonated, and caused damage more than three times farther away, Airwars found. The missiles detonated above a sports complex and two residential areas, Airwars found. The blasts killed at least 21 civilians, including seven children, said officials.