President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that U.S. forces had begun a fresh round of air strikes on Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz, warning that any Iranian retaliation would draw a far larger American response and cautioning that “very little” would remain of the Islamic Republic if the conflict escalates further.
Trump made the announcement in a post on Truth Social at 12:25 p.m. ET on September 1, as the six-month-old U.S.-Iran war threatened to erupt back into full-scale hostilities following days of relative calm.
“The United States is, as we speak, striking Iranian Targets near the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote. “The strikes are large and powerful, and in retaliation for the Iranians’ failed attempt at adding sea mines to the Strait, which currently has no mines (They have been completely removed or detonated!), and the Iranians shooting eight missiles, all successfully knocked down, at our Military Base in Jordan.”
“If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!” the president added.
The strikes were confirmed by U.S. Central Command in a post on X roughly an hour before Trump’s statement. “Today at 12 p.m. ET, U.S. forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in Iran,” CENTCOM wrote. “The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.”
Iran’s state broadcaster reported explosions on Qeshm Island in the northern Strait of Hormuz, while the state-linked Nour News agency reported blasts in the port city of Bandar Abbas and in the southern port of Chabahar. The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency later reported additional explosions in Konarak and Sirik.
Background: A War That Never Fully Ended
Tuesday’s strikes mark the latest flare-up in a conflict that began on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched joint attacks on Iranian nuclear and military sites, including the Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan facilities. The war has since killed thousands of people in Iran and Lebanon and repeatedly cycled between open combat and uneasy truce.
The fighting had shifted in recent weeks into what Reuters described as an economic standoff, punctuated by U.S. strikes on Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday and an Iranian missile response targeting American bases in Jordan. A senior Iranian source told Reuters the exchange amounted to a “limited and contained confrontation,” and Trump himself told reporters Monday that it did not signal a return to full-scale war — a position Tuesday’s strikes appeared to undercut.
A June memorandum of understanding, brokered during the Islamabad talks, had declared an end to active fighting and opened a 60-day negotiation window on the war’s most contentious issues. That window closed without a broader agreement, leaving the ceasefire framework intact on paper but increasingly strained in practice.
Pezeshkian Signals Openness to De-escalation
Hours before Trump’s post, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran was prepared to return to compliance with the June memorandum if Washington did the same. Speaking in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — which includes Russia and China — Pezeshkian said: “I am stating clearly that if the U.S. returns to its commitments under the Memorandum of Understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will immediately reciprocate.”
Iranian officials, however, showed no public sign of yielding to U.S. pressure. Parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was quoted by Iranian media warning that Tehran would respond militarily to any tightening of the “siege.” “If the enemy wants us not to export oil from the Persian Gulf, no one will be able to export oil,” Qalibaf said.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told a press conference in Tehran that Washington was “addicted to making excessive demands and has mistaken negotiations for dictating terms,” adding: “As long as they act in this manner, they will certainly get no result other than what they have achieved so far.” Baghaei said Iran would “use all our capabilities, whether on the battlefield or through our diplomatic apparatus.”
Escalating Economic Pressure Campaign
Trump’s strike announcement came amid an intensifying U.S. financial pressure campaign against Tehran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had told reporters the U.S. was preparing new sanctions targeting Iran’s remaining economic lifelines, part of a broader effort Bessent has dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast.” Bessent has previously said the campaign is designed to “sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone,” and told CNBC the sanctions package would be “the toughest sanctions in history.”
Despite the pressure campaign and months of intermittent conflict, oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has partially rebounded. Reuters reported August 31 that shipments through the strait had recovered to roughly 15 million to 16 million barrels per day, still below pre-war volumes but a marked improvement from the near-total collapse in traffic seen earlier in the conflict.
A Pattern of Escalatory Rhetoric
Tuesday’s warning was consistent with language Trump has used throughout the conflict. In March, following the initial U.S.-Israel strikes, Trump warned Iran against retaliation in a Truth Social post responding directly to threats from Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council: “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!”
Trump has also previously described planned but ultimately shelved strikes on Iran as what would have been “the biggest attack since World War II,” underscoring a recurring pattern in which the president has paired diplomatic openings with explicit threats of overwhelming military force.
What Comes Next
As of Tuesday afternoon, the scale and duration of the renewed U.S. campaign remained unclear, and it was not yet known whether Iran would respond with the direct military retaliation it has threatened. The Reuters news agency, whose coverage forms part of the basis for this report, noted that pledges from both Washington and Tehran to respond to further attacks have highlighted how quickly a conflict increasingly fought through sanctions, blockades and economic pressure could spill back into full military confrontation.