The U.S. appeared to begin a major escalation in the conflict against Iran on Wednesday as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that Iranian forces would be hit “hard” in the coming hours.
Hegseth spoke to members of the press at U.S. Central Command headquarters on Wednesday afternoon and vowed significant retaliation for the downing of a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz this week. Minutes later, Centcom officials confirmed that strikes were underway.
“Centcom will be busy tonight because the president has said that we will be hitting Iran hard,” said Hegseth. He cautioned, however, that the strikes were aimed at forcing Iran to accept a long-term agreement, not resuming full-scale war.
“We will strike them hard tonight and hopefully Iran makes a good decision,” said Hegseth. “Iran has a chance to make a good deal, a great deal, to codify what they said they’ve been willing to do, and they haven’t been doing it.”
“That’s not because we don’t want to restart anything we don’t have to restart,” added the Defense secretary. “It’s because the war department is prepared to set the terms to ensure that we have the kind of deal that President Trump expects.”
U.S. Central Command confirmed the beginning of airstrikes on targets in Iran shortly after Hegseth’s press conference concluded.
“U.S. Central Command forces began launching additional self-defense strikes today at 5:15 p.m. ET against multiple targets in Iran at the Commander in Chief’s direction. The strikes are in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression,” Centcom wrote on X.
The scope of the renewed U.S. assault wasn’t immediately clear. In recent days, President Donald Trump has asserted that the U.S. was still working through negotiations with Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojitaba Khamenei, but would destroy the remainder of Iran’s military capabilities and launch operations to seize Iranian nuclear materials if those talks failed to produce results.
On Wednesday, he also claimed that the U.S. was looting the country’s oil reserves.
“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,” said the U.S. president.
Later, on Truth Social, the president separately claimed that U.S. efforts to escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz had resulted in 100 million barrels of oil making it to market. But there was no proof offered of his claim that the U.S. was directly seizing Iranian oil supplies.
“Last month, I directed our great U.S. military to execute a secret mission to support oil tankers and other commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Today, I am pleased to announce that this effort has resulted in more than 100 MILLION barrels of oil making its way through the Strait, and into the open market,” the president wrote.
Oil prices spiked globally after Iranian forces began a months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, a tactic which has been the country’s top bargaining chip in ongoing talks with the U.S.
In the United States, gas prices soared past a $4 per gallon national average earlier this year and appeared to be approaching $5 before seeming to taper off from record highs. The drop in gas prices across the country over the past few weeks isn’t likely to be attributable to that seizure of Iranian oil, which the president gave no details about, but instead was related to optimism over U.S.-Iranian negotiations.
Before the downing of a U.S. Apache helicopter this week, the two sides were supposedly once again on the brink of reaching an agreement to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That perception was spurred on by the White House, which promised reporters last week that a deal was close and that only minor quibbles over language around Iran’s future ability to acquire nuclear material were still being worked out.
The resumption of fire being traded by Iran and Israel this week appeared to herald a breakdown of that dynamic; however, even as Trump opened up the week by pleading for the two sides to cease their attacks. A phone call between the U.S. president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly involved the U.S. president angrily accusing the Israeli leader of being opposed to peace.
Then on Tuesday, the U.S. confirmed the downing of an Apache helicopter over the Strait. Two pilots reportedly spent around two hours floating in the contested Strait of Hormuz before being rescued by an unmanned drone, the first such case publicly acknowledged by the U.S. military. Both pilots were reported by officials to be in stable condition.
Iran and Israel appeared to halt their latest rounds of hostilities on Tuesday, but both sides have warned that they will resume if the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon continues.
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