US Forces Strike Iran After American Helicopter Is Downed

(Bloomberg) -- American forces carried out “self-defense strikes” against Iran on Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump blamed Tehran for shooting down an American military helicopter off Oman.

“The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” US Central Command said in a brief statement on X. The statement did not say what targets had been hit, or where.

The attacks pose a new threat to the peace accord that Trump has said for weeks was close.

ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl said he was on the phone with Trump when the strikes on Iran were announced, and that the president told him: “This is a response to what they did they did with our helicopter last night, and I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that’s what this one is.”

Iran’s state-run IRIB reported that Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz had been struck, with at least six explosions.  

Both pilots in the Apache helicopter were rescued when their aircraft was struck while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz.  

Earlier Tuesday, Trump again claimed that a deal to resolve the conflict was close, even as a renewed outbreak of fighting between Israel and Iran raised fears the conflict was escalating again. 

On Monday, Iran and Israel agreed to halt strikes on each other following a flare-up that saw both sides launch waves of ballistic missiles. 

A ceasefire has been in place for about two months, but sporadic clashes among the US, Iran and Israel has continued, underscoring the risk of a return to full-scale war in the absence of a lasting peace deal.

Mediation efforts between the US and Iran to strike a deal remain intense, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussions between the mediators led by Pakistan and the two warring sides are ongoing, one of the people said, asking not to be named discussing private information. Talks between all parties are expected to continue this week, the person said.

Trump’s diplomatic tack is troubling Israel, which isn’t part of the negotiations and worries that a deal may leave Iran with the means to pose a threat in the future.

“We need to ensure that Iran comes out of this confrontation unable to reconstitute its own capabilities, as well as those of its proxies,“ said Orit Strock, a member of Israel’s security cabinet, referring to groups like Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Interviewed on Israel’s Army Radio, she voiced hope that Tehran would not secure a windfall in sanctions relief.

“We’re doing everything possible to ensure that this doesn’t happen,” she said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised statement on Monday that he would hold fire on Iran for now but would respond should Tehran attack again. Earlier, local TV station N12 reported that strikes in south Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, would continue at full force. 

On Tuesday, Israel told residents of Tyre in Lebanon to leave the area before a possible operation in the area. A top military commander warned that Israel is ready to strike Iran again.

Iran also announced an end to its military operations against Israel. But its central military command warned that if Israel continued to attack, including in southern Lebanon, “much harsher and more crushing actions than before will be on the way,” the semi-official Fars news agency reported, citing a statement. 

Kuwait has offered to sell its crude to refiners in Asia for the first time since the war began, the latest indication that oil flows from Persian Gulf producers are opening up despite Tehran’s threat to shipping through the strait.

A trickle of commercial shipping returned to the waterway over the weekend, even as the risks prompted some vessels to travel with their digital transponders switched off.

Offering another potential front of escalation, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen said they had launched a missile barrage on Israel and would be imposing a “complete and total ban on maritime navigation for the Israeli enemy in the Red Sea,” according to a statement on their Telegram channel on Monday.

--With assistance from Devika Krishna Kumar, Eltaf Najafizada and John Harney.

(Updates with Iranian media report, in seventh paragraph.)

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