U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged strikes on land and at sea Thursday as President Donald Trump pursues a comprehensive deal to end the war.
Central Command said U.S. forces were responding with “self-defense strikes” in the country after Iranian forces launched missiles, drones and small boats at three Navy destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes.
Centcom said it had eliminated threats to the Navy ships in portraying the episode as a more of a flareup than an end to a tenuous ceasefire.
“CENTCOM does not seek escalation but remains positioned and ready to protect American forces,” it said in a statement.
Trump confirmed the attacks in a social media post, describing Iranian drones as getting “incinerated while in the air” before being “dropped ever so beautifully down to the Ocean, very much like a butterfly dropping to its grave.”
He told ABC News that the U.S. strikes were a “love tap” and that the ceasefire remains in effect.
Central Command said neither of the three destroyers — the Truxtun, the Rafael Peralta and the Mason — were struck in the Iranian attack.
Iran said the U.S. strikes amounted to a violation of the ceasefire, and said the U.S. targeted an Iranian oil tanker travelling through the strait, according to an Iranian statement carried by state media.
The flurry of military activity in the strait comes a day after Trump announced the U.S. would no longer escort commercial ships through the strait, which Iran closed to most commercial traffic at the start of the conflict and through which only a few ships have since transited.
The U.S. has exchanged fire with Iranian forces in the strait twice this week. On Monday, CENTCOM head Adm. Bradley Cooper said the U.S. “blew up” six small Iranian boats in response to cruise missiles, drones and small boats attacking Navy ships.
Those attacks prompted Trump to warn that said Iran would be “blown off the face of the Earth” if continued to attack U.S. ships.
Trump made a similar threat in his latest social media post, promising to retaliate “a lot harder, and a lot more violently” if Iran does sign an agreement to end a war that began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on the country.