US President Donald Trump has vowed more attacks on Iran after the warring countries exchanged fire for the first time in more than a month, sending oil prices up 3 per cent.
The US president issued a warning on Monday hours after Tehran fired missiles at American assets in Jordan in response to an attack by the US on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, ending a month of relative calm in the war.
"There will be a response" to Iran's retaliatory attack, Trump told Fox News. "We're going to hit them hard."
The US military said on Sunday it had struck two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak, saying it believed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was poised to launch rockets with sea mines into the waterway. Iran retaliated with a barrage of missiles against Jordan, where the US maintains a troop presence. Trump said one missile pierced US air defences but the rest were intercepted.
The overnight attacks and Trump's threat to escalate the conflict pushed oil prices above $90 a barrel, a rise of more than 3 per cent.
Tehran threatened further responses to US strikes on Monday, with an Iranian official telling Reuters that for every US attack, the regime would deliver a response "dozens of times greater". Iran's retaliation for the Larak attack demonstrated that "no target in the region is beyond Tehran's reach", the official added.
The US attack appeared smaller and more focused than Washington's last-known larger-scale strikes on the Islamic republic on July 29th, when "dozens" of targets were hit in a two-hour wave of bombing. US Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, described its attack on Sunday as a "limited, precise action".
Trump also declared that Iran is "dead", calling for the country's leaders to be tried for what he described as "war crimes against humanity". In a social media post, he wrote: "Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country."
Trump has been reiterating since the early days of the conflict that the Iranian governing system is collapsing. But the regime has remained standing without any major defections, with the IRGC spearheading the war effort.
The flare-up was the first round of fighting between the two countries since July. The Trump administration had said it was shifting tactics from military operations to economic pressure. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expanded secondary sanctions on Tehran, saying Iran was "lashing out kinetically because they are losing economically".
Iranian President Pezeshkian said his country was "not seeking war" and would give a "firm response to the aggressors". The IRGC said it used missiles and drones to strike against technical and maintenance infrastructure at two US airbases in Jordan, while Iran's regular army said it launched dozens of attack drones against the US military at Al Minhad Air Base in the UAE.
Larak is a strategic point allowing the IRGC navy to observe and attack commercial shipping. Farzin Nadimi, an expert, said IRGC forces have rocket-launched 'smart' programmable mines.
Trump also imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court officials for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over war crime charges in Gaza. He has also claimed Iran's crackdown on anti-government demonstrators is preventing the regime from collapsing, citing an alleged death toll of over 100,000 protesters, a figure he had previously put at 60,000. Iranian authorities put the figure at 3,117, blaming deaths on Israel-backed 'rioters'.