US forces attack Iran after US helicopter shot down

(Bloomberg) — U.S. forces launched “self-defense strikes” against Iran on Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump accused Tehran of shooting down a U.S. military helicopter near Oman.

“The mission is a proportionate response to Iran’s unwarranted aggression,” US Central Command said in a brief statement on X. The statement did not say what targets were struck or where.

The attacks pose a new threat to a peace deal that Trump has said for weeks is 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 to our helicopter last night, and I believe the response should be very strong, very strong, and this is it.”

Iran’s state-run IRIB reported that Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz was hit by at least six explosions.

Both Apache helicopter pilots were rescued when their aircraft was hit while on patrol over the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier on 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 that the conflict would escalate again.

On Monday, Iran and Israel agreed to halt mutual attacks after a flare-up in which both sides fired waves of ballistic missiles.

The ceasefire has been in place for about two months, but sporadic clashes between the US, Iran and Israel continue, underscoring the risk of a return to full-scale war unless a lasting peace deal is struck.

Efforts to broker a deal between the U.S. and Iran remain intense, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussions between mediators led by Pakistan and the two warring parties 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 approach worries Israel, which is not part of the negotiations and fears the deal could give Iran the means to pose a threat in the future.

“We must ensure that Iran emerges from this confrontation unable to rebuild its own capabilities, as well as the capabilities of its proxies,” said Orit Strock, a member of Israel’s security cabinet, referring to groups such as Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. In an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, she expressed hope that Tehran would not provide an unexpected relaxation of sanctions.

“We’re doing everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised statement on Monday that he would shoot at Iran for now but would respond if Tehran strikes again. Local television station N12 earlier said strikes in southern Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, would continue in full force.

On Tuesday, Israel told residents of Tire in Lebanon to leave the area ahead of a possible operation in the area. The top military commander has warned that Israel is ready to attack Iran again.

Iran also announced the end of its military operations against Israel. But its central military command warned that if Israel continued its attacks, including in southern Lebanon, “much tougher and more crushing actions than before will be on the way,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted the statement as saying.

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

A trickle of commercial shipping returned to the waterway over the weekend, although the risks forced some vessels to travel with their digital transponders turned off.

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen offered another potential front for escalation, saying they had launched missile fire at Israel and would impose a “complete and total naval ban on Israel’s enemy in the Red Sea,” according to a statement on their Telegram channel on Monday.

–With help from Devika Krishna Kumar, Eltaf Najafizada and John Harney.

(Update with Iranian media report in paragraph seven.)

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