U.S. and Iran Trade Strikes for a Second Day

The exchanges raise the specter of a return to all-out war in the Middle East.

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The United States launched a new wave of airstrikes on Iran early Thursday morning local time, and Iran claimed to have responded with two waves of attacks, bringing the two sides closer to a return to all-out war. Hours earlier, President Trump vowed to keep up military pressure on Tehran because Iranian leaders were taking “too long to negotiate.”

U.S. Central Command said the attack began at 5:15 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, or 12:45 a.m. on Thursday in Iran. Explosions were heard in Qeshm near the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the southern cities of Bandar Abbas, Minab and Sirik, according to Iranian news outlets.

President Trump told a Fox News reporter on Wednesday night that the United States fired 49 Tomahawk missiles at targets inside Iran, in addition to bombing with fighter jets. Mr. Trump added the attack would be paused shortly but would resume on Thursday night if Iran did not capitulate in negotiations with the United States.

Iran said it had responded with two waves of attacks on targets at U.S. airbases in Kuwait and Bahrain, but there was no immediate confirmation of that. Iran also said that the Strait of Hormuz was now closed to any type of vessel, including oil tankers and commercial ships. U.S. Central Command denied that the strait was closed.

The latest exchange of fire followed U.S. strikes roughly 24 hours earlier, in which the American military said that its jets had hit multiple Iranian targets in response to the downing of an American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Iran responded with its own strikes on U.S. targets in the region.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear that the new strikes were meant not as retaliation for a particular military action but to pressure Tehran to agree to peace on terms agreeable to Mr. Trump.

“If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. “And we’re very good at it. Nobody better in the world.”

The repeated U.S. strikes appear to contradict Mr. Trump’s repeated reassurances that a peace deal with Iran is imminent. They also further undercut the credibility of the cease-fire declared two months ago, after which U.S. and Iranian forces traded occasional attacks and issued almost daily contradictory claims about blame, the fighting and peace talks.

The claimed cease-fire “is more like a lesser-fire, as we have seen with the escalating attacks and rhetoric over the last 48 hours,” António Guterres, the United Nations’ secretary general, said on Wednesday.

  • Economic effect: U.S. consumer prices rose 4.2 percent in May compared with a year earlier, the highest pace of inflation since April 2023, amid the stalemate over Iran. Oil prices also jumped on Wednesday. Read more ›

  • Iran water tanks: An analysis of satellite images and photographs suggests that a precision U.S. attack early Wednesday hit drinking-water facilities in Iran’s southern Hormozgan Province, where temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week. A local official said water service had been cut off for some 12 hours to about 20,000 people. U.S. Central Command did not respond to a request for comment on the report of the strike. Read more ›

  • Not-so-secret mission: Mr. Trump described a clandestine mission that involved spiriting millions of barrels of oil right through the Strait of Hormuz under Iran’s nose. But a U.S. military official said that the comments, made from the Oval Office and broadcast on live television, referred to a previously reported U.S. effort to steer commercial vessels through the strait. Read more ›

Kuwait’s airspace has reopened and air traffic has returned to normal, the country’s civil aviation authority said. It had earlier closed Kuwaiti airspace because of what it said were Iranian attacks.

Kuwait’s civil aviation authority said it has temporarily closed the country’s airspace because of Iranian attacks and the potential risks to civilian planes. Flights have been diverted to alternative airports, the authority added.

The Kuwait Army says its air defenses are intercepting hostile targets, without saying whether they are missiles or drones, or where they came from. And in Bahrain, the authorities have activated warnings sirens, the interior ministry says, without mentioning what triggered them.

U.S. Central Command says American forces have completed their latest strikes against Iran. The attacks targeted Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites, according to the Centcom statement.

Explosions and air-defense activity were reported across parts of southern Iran early Thursday.

The clearest reports were concentrated in Hormozgan Province, along Iran’s southern coast, where Iranian state and semiofficial media listed explosions or impacts in Sirik, Minab and Bandar Abbas, a major port city with key military and naval facilities.

In Asaluyeh, Iranian outlets reported air-defense activity and a possible missile interception, but officials continued to deny any attack or explosion at South Pars or nearby energy facilities, among the most important gas infrastructure sites in Iran.

Gen. Majid Mousavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace forces, threatened to turn the entire region into “hell.” In a short written statement published in state news agency IRNA, he said: “You are making the holy Strait of Hormuz unsafe? We will turn the entire region into hell from across Iran. This is the response to America’s aggression in the region.”

Residents of Karaj, a city about 20 miles southwest of Tehran, reported hearing large explosions in the early hours of Thursday morning. Iran’s armed forces have a missile factory and military bases in Karaj, including the Bidganeh military base. In March, the United States struck a major civilian bridge on a highway linking Karaj and Tehran that had not yet opened to the public.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they carried out two waves of attacks early Thursday targeting 18 important targets belonging to U.S. forces at Ali Al-Salem and Ahmad Al-Jaber air bases in Kuwait and Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, according to IRNA, Iran’s official state news agency.

The Guards said the strikes were carried out in response to American attacks on I.R.G.C. service units, coastal posts, police command sites and the Bandar Abbas airport area. They claimed the strikes had “hit and destroyed” the targets.

The claim could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate confirmation from U.S., Kuwaiti or Bahraini officials.

Strikes early Wednesday destroyed what appears to be a drinking-water facility on Iran’s southern coast, near the Strait of Hormuz, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Around the time of the strikes, the U.S. Central Command said in a post on X that it had conducted attacks near the strait “with precision munitions from U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets.”

Iranian state media reported that the U.S. had hit water storage buildings and a local official said that water was cut off to more than 20,000 people living in a town and villages nearby. Temperatures in the area have reached above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week.

A commercial satellite image from the morning of June 9 shows two small water structures in the village of Bemani. Both have light blue pipes, typical for water distribution infrastructure, as is their location — on a hill outside of a populated area. The buildings are consistent with the description of the two storage tanks that Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the head of the provincial water authority, said were destroyed.

It is unclear if the U.S. intentionally struck the water facilities, or knew what was in the buildings. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law.

Videos released on Wednesday by Iranian media outlets, including state media, and the provincial water authority show that the roof of the smaller building collapsed.

The larger facility next to it still stands, but images show that it has a small impact hole in the center of its roof. The Times confirmed the images of the structure by matching the visible surroundings to reference imagery of the site.

A photo of fragments that Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency, said were recovered from the site showed remnants identified as a GBU-39 bomb by researchers with the Open Source Munitions Portal, a database of weapon fragments documented in conflict zones.

The GBU-39, a small precision-guided glide bomb in the 250-pound class, is consistent with the damage shown in the footage of the damaged building: a clean hole punched through the building’s roof and limited blast damage around it.

Both buildings stand outside the village, and there is no other infrastructure in the immediate vicinity. Hitting remote buildings and striking the center of a roof are considered likely indicators of a precision strike. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, said the military is aware of the reports and is looking into them.

Mr. Hamzehpour, the provincial water authority leader, said that mobile water tankers had brought in water to supply residents while crews built a new service line that bypassed the damaged tanks, a task he said had been accomplished within 12 hours.

John Ismay, James McManagan and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting. Alexander Cardia contributed graphics editing. Translation was contributed by Artemis Moshtaghian.

Trey Yingst, a reporter for Fox News in Tel Aviv, said that President Trump told him in a phone call that the United States fired 49 Tomahawk missiles at targets in Iran, in addition to bombings from U.S. fighter jets. Yingst added that Trump said that the bombing would pause shortly, but would continue on Thursday night if Iranian officials did not capitulate in negotiations with the United States.

After announcing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps navy warned vessels anchored in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman not to move, saying that approaching the strait would be treated as cooperation with the enemy, the country’s official state broadcaster, IRIB, reported. While much of Iran’s regular navy has been destroyed, the I.R.G.C. still deploys a flotilla of small, fast boats to disrupt maritime traffic through one of the world’s most important energy passageways.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement that Iran’s armed forces would respond “forcefully and definitively” to any aggression and attacks by the United States. Iran and the U.S. traded fire a day earlier and tensions have steadily escalated. The hard-line generals running Iran have signaled a willingness to settle the standoff militarily.

Speaking to reporters outside U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, did not directly answer a question about whether U.S. strikes in Iran could target civilian infrastructure, like bridges and electrical infrastructure, dismissing the reporter’s question as “impugning the motives” of the U.S. military and saying of Iran: “We will hit them hard, on our terms.”

Iran’s armed forces said in a statement carried by state media that the Strait of Hormuz was closed to any type of vessel, including oil tankers and commercial ships. Any ship trying to pass, the statement said, would be hit. It cited the reason as military clashes in the region, but Iran had already effectively closed the critical passageway shortly after the war began in February. The U.S. Central Command denied that the strait had been closed. A U.S. military effort has steered 200 ships through the strait in a little over a month. About 3,000 ships normally traverse it each month.

Iranian state media said several explosions hit the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, near an airport and an airbase. The report did not specify the source of the explosions, which came after U.S. Central Command said it was launching strikes against multiple targets in Iran. Bandar Abbas has been previously targeted by American strikes.

Prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough had grown dimmer when a Qatari mediating delegation departed Tehran on Wednesday evening with no progress in talks.

Tasnim News, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, said the United States had attacked a petrochemical plant in South Pars gas field located in Asalouyeh. Earlier Iran’s state television reported air defense around the energy plant in Asalouyeh being activated. Targeting critical energy infrastructure would represent a significant escalation in recent back-and-forth attacks.

The U.S. military resumed attacking Iran on Wednesday in what Central Command said were “self-defense strikes” against “mulitiple targets.” Central Command said the strikes were in response to “Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression.” The strikes followed back-and-forth attacks between the United States and Iran on Tuesday and early Wednesday after Iran downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship on Monday.

Iran’s state television said three explosions were heard in Sirik and in Minab, which were struck in the last wave of U.S. strikes. These locations are along Iran’s southern Persian Gulf coast, where military and naval outposts are located. Residents of Tehran said they heard air defense sirens from the western part of the government’s complex. Iranian officials have said they would retaliate forcefully to any U.S. strikes.

A bureau of the state broadcaster, IRIB, reported that air defenses were activated in Asaluyeh, a major energy hub near Iran’s South Pars gas facilities.

It was a dramatic moment. President Trump seemed to be disclosing, on live television, a clandestine mission that involved spiriting away millions of barrels of oil, right under Iran’s nose. In Mr. Trump’s telling, the mission was so secretive that the Iranians were learning about it only at that very moment.

“I can say it now. Something you didn’t know,” Mr. Trump told reporters from his seat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning. “Do you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran — until right now.”

“We took out, the other night, 22 ships, late at night, with no lights, because they don’t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it,” he continued.

As often happens with Mr. Trump, the truth was less dramatic. According to a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the president was referring to an American effort to steer the passage of dozens of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

While the operation was surreptitious enough — the U.S.-guided vessels have been turning off their transponders to avoid detection when crossing the narrow waterway — it could hardly have been news to Iran. Late last month, The New York Times published an article about the effort, reporting that U.S. Central Command had shepherded around 70 commercial ships through the strait.

The number of vessels steered through the strait is now more than 200 in a little over a month, the military official said. Before the war, traffic through the waterway was typically about 3,000 ships per month.

U.S. officials have declined to say what type of vessels were going through the strait clandestinely and what route they took, but one official indicated that at least one route was not close to the Iranian coastline. Ships passing near Iran without obtaining Iranian approval face the threat of an almost-certain attack by Iranian drones or missiles. Shipping analysts say the U.S.-guided crossings appear to follow routes that are closer to Oman.

Later on Wednesday, the president claimed on social media that this “secret mission” that he authorized last month had resulted in more than 100 million barrels of oil reaching the open market. That claim could not be immediately verified independently.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the United States would bomb Iran on Wednesday night. “Centcom, Central Command, will be busy tonight,” he told reporters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., “because President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be.” He added: “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we will negotiate with bombs, and we’re very good at it.”

Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told the Security Council on Wednesday that President Trump should stop threatening Iran. “Iran has never negotiated under threats and pressure, and will never submit to pressure or coercion,” he said.

There was a good deal of confusion earlier when President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the United States had been bringing “millions of barrels of oil” through the Strait of Hormuz without Iran’s knowledge. A senior U.S. military official said that the president was referring to American efforts to steer the passage of dozens of commercial vessels through the strait. In other words: This is not some new clandestine effort to take Iranian oil. The Times published a story about this coordination more than a week ago.

The State Department announced on Wednesday that it was imposing sanctions on 13 entities and individuals based in Iran, Belarus and China, including in Hong Kong, that had tried to procure weapons for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful arm of the Iranian military. Among the weapons the announcement specified are shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles known as MANPADS. American officials said weeks ago that they thought one or more Chinese companies were considering providing that kind of weapon to Iran. The Treasury Department said it was also imposing sanctions on nine individuals and entities trying to procure weapons for Iran.

Foreign ministers of Arab states on the Persian Gulf met on Wednesday to condemn a new round of Iranian attacks that targeted Bahrain and Kuwait, demanding an “immediate halt” to the hostilities and questioning whether their relations with Iran could be rebuilt.

“Persistence in this aggressive approach will only lead to further isolation,” the ministers said in a joint statement after the meeting in Bahrain.

Earlier on Wednesday, Bahrain’s military said it had intercepted and destroyed an unspecified number of missiles and drones launched by Iran, describing the barrage as a “treacherous” attack. Kuwait’s army also said that the country was intercepting hostile aerial projectiles, without providing further details.

Later, Kuwait’s foreign ministry issued a statement strongly condemning “repeated Iranian attacks” against the country.

Iran has continued to periodically strike the Gulf countries, which host major U.S. military bases, during the shaky cease-fire that began in April.

Iran’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it was the responsibility of Persian Gulf countries to prevent U.S. strikes on Iran from their territories and that Iran would not hesitate to defend itself by targeting the bases from where it is attacked.

With the exception of Bahrain, most of the Gulf countries have generally denied that they have allowed U.S. attacks against Iran to be launched from their territories. President Trump, however, has repeatedly said that Gulf countries, including Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are fighting alongside the United States.

The Gulf foreign ministers said in their statement on Wednesday that they blamed Iran “fully” for its actions. They demanded an “immediate and complete halt to any targeting of Gulf countries, their interests and citizens.”

Still, they added, “the door to understanding remains open for those who choose a language of wisdom and good neighborliness.”

Iran’s state broadcaster reported that U.S. military strikes hit water facilities in the south of the country on Wednesday, damaging two concrete tanks and cutting off water supplies for thousands of residents.

Video published by IRIB, the state broadcaster, and verified by The New York Times, showed a damaged concrete structure with a collapsed roof near the city of Kuhestak in Sirik county in Hormozgan province, on the coast of the Strait of Hormuz.

IRIB said that the facility was a water tank. The Times could not independently verify that claim or what caused the damage. The broadcaster later reported that services had been restored within 12 hours.

The IRIB report was published hours after U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said it had conducted strikes in southern Iran in response to the downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter on Monday.

In response to a request for information about reports of damage to the water facilities in Sirik on Wednesday, Central Command declined to comment. Hours earlier, it said it had targeted Iranian air defenses, ground control stations and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz with “precision munitions.”

The strait is a vital route for oil and gas shipments. Iran’s effective blockade of the waterway has roiled global energy markets and become a major source of leverage in its negotiations with the United States on a deal to end the war.

The U.S. military has previously launched strikes against Iranian facilities in Hormozgan. In March, airstrikes hit an underground air force base there.

The two water tanks had a combined capacity of 2.5 million liters, Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the chief executive of the province’s water company, said in a statement published on its website, adding that they were damaged by missiles.

The water company said that the damage took both facilities out of service, cutting off water for 20,000 people in Kuhestak and 10 other villages in the district of Bemani.

The structure is near the city of Kuhestak. Text painted on the hilltop structure reads: “Water is the pulse of life.” The most recent photographs available from Planet Labs, a satellite imagery company, showed the structure was undamaged in early January.

During the summer months, Hormozgan province can rank among the hottest places on earth, with temperatures occasionally reaching 122 degrees.

In Kuhestak, the heat hit 96 degrees on Wednesday.

In the statement, Mr. Hamzehpour described the temperature as “unbearable” without water. Emergency crews were racing to reestablish water supplies, he said, adding that the authorities had dispatched mobile tankers to supply drinking water to the nearby villages in the interim.

“In a region already facing extreme heat, chronic water scarcity, and a rapidly warming climate, the loss of drinking-water infrastructure is more than physical damage,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, an Iranian environmental expert and geophysicist at Virginia Tech. “It threatens the health, resilience and daily survival of entire communities.”

Two dozen Indian sailors aboard an oil tanker struck by a U.S. missile off the coast of Oman on Monday sent frantic SOS messages for more than two hours before they were rescued.

“We have fire onboard, we have fire onboard. And vessel is sinking,” a crew member on board the ship, the Marivex, said in a voice message to Indian shipping authorities and organizations.

“Please help, please help … We are all crew Indian. 24 crew,” the crew member added in the message, which was shared with The New York Times by Manoj Yadav, the general secretary of an Indian seafarers’ union.

All the sailors were later rescued by a military helicopter from Oman and were taken ashore to Masirah Island, off Oman’s coast.

The U.S. military’s Central Command later said that it had “disabled” the Marivex because the ship had violated its naval blockade of Iran by attempting to sail to an Iranian port. It said that a fighter jet from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier had fired “into the ship’s engineering and steering spaces” after the crew failed to comply with directions from U.S. forces.

Central Command said that it had disabled seven “noncompliant vessels” since April 13, when the Trump administration initiated a blockade of ships traveling to or from Iranian ports in an effort to put pressure on Tehran to make a deal to end hostilities with the United States.

Both the United States and Iran have sought to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz — a vital maritime waterway for transporting oil, gas and other critical commodities — since they agreed to a cease-fire in April. Iran says that only ships that have permission from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will be allowed to pass.

India’s shipping ministry said that it had received “reports of a fire” starting at about 1:30 p.m. Monday on the Marivex, a Palau-flagged vessel. The ministry’s initial statement on the matter did not specify the cause of the fire.

Mr. Yadav, the general secretary of the Forward Seamen’s Union of India, said he started receiving messages from the crew a little after 2 p.m. Then came a flurry of frantic calls, messages and voice notes pleading for help, he said.

Videos the crew shared with Mr. Yadav showed a fire in the engine room. One of the two lifeboats on the ship had been destroyed when the ship was hit and the second was inaccessible, he said.

Mr. Yadav gathered the videos and messages and posted them on social media, tagging the Indian navy and India’s foreign affairs ministry. He said that the Indian Embassy in Oman then reached out to him and rescue efforts began.

By 4:15 p.m., Mr. Yadav began receiving videos from the crew showing them being rescued by helicopter.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesman for India’s foreign affairs ministry, said the ship had been “disabled” — echoing the U.S. Central Command — but that the crew was safe. He thanked the Omani government for rescuing the seafarers.

Oil prices rose on Wednesday after President Trump told reporters that he planned to attack Iran again, after the United States and Iran traded new strikes across the Middle East. Global stocks mostly fell.

The attacks, straining a two-month cease-fire between the countries, were the latest jolt to energy markets. The war in Iran has choked the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil.

The effects of rising oil prices were evident in the latest monthly inflation report, released on Wednesday, which showed a 4.2 percent increase in consumer prices in May versus last year — the fastest pace since April 2023. The rise was driven almost entirely by energy prices, which as a category has risen 23.5 percent over the year before.

Oil climbs.

  • The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose around 3 percent in the afternoon, to about $94 a barrel, before falling slightly.

  • West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was also up roughly 3 percent in afternoon trading, to around $91 a barrel, before dipping slightly.

  • Oil prices had been wavering on Wednesday but jumped after Mr. Trump, in a social media post, appeared to threaten Iran for failing to agree to end the war. It climbed more after the president told reporters that he planned to attack again.

Price of Brent crude oil

How much the international benchmark costs

Stocks drop.

  • The S&P 500 dropped 1.6 percent at the end of the trading day on Wednesday.

  • Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, mostly fell. Volatility in technology stocks continued with the Kospi index in South Korea declining 4.5 percent and the Taiex in Taiwan dropping 3.3 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed 1.9 percent lower.

  • In Europe, the Stoxx 600, a broad index that tracks the region’s largest companies, was flat.

S&P 500 index

How stocks are trading in the United States

Gasoline prices dip.

  • Gas prices fell a penny to a national average of $4.15 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, but since the war began, the cost for drivers has risen by 39 percent.

  • Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.

  • The average price of diesel also dipped to $5.30 a gallon, but is now up 41 percent since the start of the war.

What they are saying: A ‘topsy-turvy’ week in markets.

  • It has been a “genuinely topsy-turvy” week of trading thus far, Deutsche Bank analysts wrote, “with oil and tech whipsawing” markets on Monday and Tuesday.

  • “Not only are we oscillating between deal or no deal with the U.S. and Iran, but markets are also swinging between 1999-style A.I. exuberance and 2000-type tech crash fears,” they noted.