WASHINGTON- A tentative armistice between the United States and Iran reached less than a month ago appeared all but dead Wednesday after the two sides traded new military strikes and as President Trump directed new strikes against the Islamic Republic.
The escalation marked a dramatic turn after the Trump administration spent weeks selling a diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran that proved controversial across the political spectrum, lifting oil sanctions and a naval blockade on Iran in exchange for the promise of talks on the status of the Strait of Hormuz and its decades-old nuclear program.
Now, speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump said he believed the truce – which diplomats describe as a memorandum of understanding – was “over” and that it was a “waste of time” dealing with the Iranian leadership.
“They're scum. They're sick people,” Trump said of the Iranian leaders, whom he had characterized last month as “very rational people” and “very nice to deal with.”
The president's gloomy views on the fate of the ceasefire deal were shared by Iran's Foreign Ministry, which issued a statement Wednesday saying that U.S. strikes, the reestablishment of a U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and Israel's continued attacks in Lebanon rendered “important and fundamental” parts of the deal “ineffective.”
The breakdown of the truce was underscored when Trump ordered the US military to launch a series of strikes against Iran on Wednesday afternoon to “further degrade its ability to threaten” commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial ships and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway,” US Central Command said in a statement on social media.
Earlier in the day, Trump signaled that the United States planned to “hit them hard” and raised the possibility of seizing Kharg Island, which is vital to Iran's economy. His comments quickly caused oil prices to rise and global stock markets to fall, a concern that Trump acknowledged but did not appear to influence his decision-making regarding Iran.
“If we hit Iran, oil will go up a little bit, that's fine,” Trump said. He later added that the United States could “do something else that might improve it a little bit, but I don't think it's going to improve it much at all.”
As Trump signals continued fighting, his administration has been seeking more than $67 billion in funding to cover expenses related to the Iran war, a request that Congress has yet to approve as lawmakers are divided over the president's handling of the conflict.
“The American people are paying the price for Trump's utter failure on Iran,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Wednesday. “Our troops are once again in harm's way and high fuel costs continue to punish working families.”
The president's stance on the war marked the latest setback to a fragile truce that has barely held since the 14-page agreement was signed on June 17, as the United States and Iran have engaged in cycles of attacks and counterattacks in recent weeks.
Trump was noticeably angrier at Iran on Wednesday when he cast doubt on the deal. Last month, Trump congratulated the Iranian leadership for trying to reach a peace deal and welcomed the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route for the world's oil and gas. But from his comments, it was clear that his patience had run out.
“I'm not happy with them,” Trump said. “They're crazy. Something's wrong with these people. For 47 years, they've been the bullies of the Middle East and they're not the bullies anymore. They're not the bullies anymore.”
Trump expressed frustration with Iran negotiators and their resistance to meeting U.S. demands to reopen the strait. When asked if he intended to send troops to Iran, the president dismissed the idea.
“Why should I come in now?” Trump said. “It would come in when they are completely eliminated or an agreement is reached.”
Still, the president kept the door open to negotiations and said his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner “want to negotiate.”
“They're good people, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, but they have to come back to me,” Trump said. “As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with [the Iranians]. “They are liars.”
The latest breach of the ceasefire followed a well-known chain reaction of retaliatory attacks, which began with a series of attacks on three oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, including a Qatari ship carrying natural gas, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre.
The Qatari tanker was off the coast of Oman when it was hit and caught fire, the maritime monitor said, in what experts say was a measure to thwart ships trying to use an alternative transit route to the one specified by Iran. Iran did not claim responsibility, but a report on Iranian state television said the Qatari tanker was attacked after ignoring warnings to return.
The other two ships were damaged but were able to continue to their destination, according to the British group.
Qatar, which has played a vital role in facilitating negotiations between the United States and Iran, condemned the attack on its tanker as “unacceptable.”
The United States responded with a wave of strikes against more than 80 Iranian targets aimed at “impositions.”[ing] high costs for targeting and attacking commercial ships manned by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” according to a statement from US Central Command. That count included approximately 60 small Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vessels in the strait.
Iranian state media said the US strikes targeted Sirik, Qeshm Island and Bushehr and Bandar Abbas, while a US drone strike on the port city of Mahshahr killed a member of the Revolutionary Guard.
Before the attacks, the White House revoked the 60-day temporary license granted to Tehran to sell and deliver oil during the truce.
Iran's military responded with its own attacks against 85 US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait; It also shot down an MQ-9 drone, according to a statement Wednesday.
Kuwait said its military intercepted two ballistic missiles and 13 drones, but none had caused property damage or casualties.
Global oil prices rose 6% on news of Trump's revocation of the deal, rising to more than $78 a barrel, below the wartime peak but still above pre-war levels.
The renewed violence appeared to have little effect on the funeral of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli attack on February 28, in the early hours of the war.
The funeral, a period of mourning that will last several days, will end on Thursday, when Khamenei's body will return from Iraq to be buried in the city of Mashhad, his birthplace. Negotiations were to begin once again.
In his remarks Wednesday, Trump said that Iranian leaders had called a “time out” to attend the funeral and that he had promised not to kill them.
“And I said give it to them and they started shooting missiles,” Trump said.
It is not yet clear whether those talks, which were intended to address the thorniest issues between the two countries, including the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's nuclear program, will go ahead. Iran, for its part, maintained a defiant attitude.
“The era of intimidation and extortion is over,” wrote Mohammad Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran's parliament. “It's going nowhere. We're not backing down.”
Ali Akbar Velayati, senior advisor to the Supreme Leader, posted on X that Trump's policies had “led the region into the fire.”
“We had previously warned that the region is not a place for political games by small countries, and we have repeatedly demonstrated that adventures find an immediate response,” he wrote.
He added that the Axis of Resistance – referring to the network of groups allied with Iran in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen – would not remain “silence in the face of humiliation and adventurism” and has “its finger on the trigger.”
Hoaxes reported from Beirut and Washington bulls.
