The United States and Iran exchanged fire overnight Friday amid a fragile ceasefire as American officials stepped up preparations for potential nuclear negotiations, including consultations this week with experts who could help determine the fate of Tehran’s enriched uranium stockpile.
The US military said it carried out strikes on Iranian radar sites in what it described as a defensive action after Iran launched four attack drones toward the Strait of Hormuz.
According to the military, all four drones were shot down after they “posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic.” The radar sites targeted in the US strikes were located in Goruk and on Qeshm Island, CENTCOM said.
The exchange came days after Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person, wounding dozens and briefly shutting down the facility.
Hours after the overnight US strikes, Kuwait’s military said it was responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later claimed responsibility for attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain, saying it had targeted American military bases in the two Gulf states in retaliation for the US attacks.
US military officials said Iran had launched seven ballistic missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain.
In a statement posted to X, US Central Command said it intercepted six of the missiles, while the seventh “did not reach its intended target.”
“There are currently no reports of harm to US personnel, and Iranian claims of damaging US 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain are false,” CENTCOM said.
The latest exchange marked another escalation in a series of tit-for-tat attacks that have tested the tenuous ceasefire and complicated efforts to secure a broader agreement extending the truce.
Despite the attacks raising new concerns that the ceasefire could collapse, Trump told reporters Friday that “the situation with Iran seems to be going quite well.”
Trump increasingly appears to be boxed in on a conflict that has settled into a holding pattern. US and Iranian negotiators reached a tentative agreement a week ago to extend the ceasefire by 60 days and start a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program. But Trump has called for unspecified changes and Iranian officials have shown no public signs of signing off on the deal.
Asked on Friday why it was taking so long, Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” it was because “it’s a very hard thing for them.”
“There are things they never thought they’d be doing that they’re going to have to do. They’ve got no choice, and it takes a little while,” he said in the interview. “Vietnam lasted 19 years, I’m into my third month.”
Trump also said Tehran retained roughly 21 to 22 percent of its missile arsenal despite widespread joint US-Israel strikes in the recent 40-day Iran war.
“Most of the drone factories have been knocked out, most of the launching pads have been knocked out and most of the missile manufacturing areas have been knocked out,” Trump said. “But they still have capacity. They have some missiles, they have some drones. I would say percentage-wise, maybe 21-22% of their missiles. It’s a lot of missiles, but it’s not what it was when we first attacked.”
Trump’s statements appear to contradict a recent Channel 12 report, which said that updated US intelligence assessments indicated that roughly two-thirds of Iran’s missile launchers remain operational. Earlier wartime estimates suggested that about half had been destroyed.
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