President Trump declared the ceasefire agreement with Iran dead on Wednesday, announcing that U.S. forces would strike the regime again that evening after Iranian forces attacked three commercial oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and fired missiles at targets in Bahrain and Kuwait.
"To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore," Trump said at the NATO summit in Turkey, sitting alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The president's remarks came hours after U.S. Central Command confirmed it had already struck more than 80 targets inside Iran with precision munitions on July 7, a response CENTCOM described as an "immediate" answer to the tanker attacks.
The collapse of the fragile memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran marks the most significant escalation in the region since joint U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28. Iran had been in a six-day mourning period for its late Supreme Leader, a window during which Trump said he expected calm. Instead, the regime opened fire on shipping lanes that carry a significant share of the world's oil supply.
The Pentagon's operational arm in the Middle East laid out the scope of the July 7 strikes in an official statement. CENTCOM said U.S. forces targeted Iranian air defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, and anti-ship missile capabilities. The strikes also destroyed more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the Strait of Hormuz.
Three commercial vessels were attacked by Iranian forces: the Marshall Islands-flagged M/T Al Rekayyat, the Saudi Arabia-flagged M/T Wedyan, and the Liberian-flagged M/T Cyprus Prosperity. No casualty or damage figures for the tankers have been publicly reported.
Iran responded to the American strikes with its own attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait. Details on the damage from those retaliatory strikes remain unclear.
Trump did not hold back about what comes next. Speaking at the NATO summit, he told reporters:
"We hit them very hard last night... probably hit them hard again tonight. I'll give a little warning, we're going to hit them hard tonight."
Global energy markets reacted immediately. Brent crude oil jumped to $78.39 per barrel overnight, its highest level since June 19. All three major U.S. stock indexes fell in pre-market trading Wednesday, with NASDAQ, Dow Jones, and S&P 500 futures each dropping roughly one point.
The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil chokepoint. Any sustained disruption there sends prices higher and rattles supply chains from Houston to Hamburg. Trump indicated he is considering reinstating a full blockade on Iran, a move that would further tighten the pressure on Tehran's already battered economy.
The president's willingness to escalate stands in sharp contrast to years of diplomatic hedging by previous administrations. World leaders had praised the original peace agreement when it appeared headed toward a formal signing. That goodwill has now evaporated.
Trump's language at the NATO summit left no doubt about his frustration with Tehran's leadership. He called the regime's leaders "sick people" and described them as "vicious, violent people." He accused them of lying and acting in bad faith.
"We said, 'Go and do your funeral stuff,' and instead of that, they start shooting rockets at ships."
He added: "As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars."
Yet even as he condemned the regime, Trump left a narrow path open for diplomacy. He acknowledged that his negotiators still believe a deal could be salvaged. "I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate, they're good people... but they have to come back to me," he said. Who those negotiators are and what terms they might bring back remain unknown.
That mix of force and conditional openness has defined Trump's approach to Tehran. He previously accused Iran of leaking false deal terms as a nuclear agreement neared signing, a sign that trust between the two sides was already thin before the tanker attacks shattered it entirely.
Rutte, sitting beside Trump, offered full-throated support for the American military response.
"I think what you did last night was absolutely necessary. It was a very strong response."
The NATO Secretary General went further, describing Europe as "one big platform of power projection for the United States" and stating that 5,000 planes had taken off from European airports in support of Operation Epic Fury, the apparent operational name for the allied effort. Rutte dismissed any allied dissent as minimal, saying non-support from certain nations amounted to "isolated cases."
Rutte's eagerness to stand with Trump reflects a broader effort to mend the relationship between NATO and the White House. For an alliance that spent years fretting about American commitment, the secretary general's language was notably deferential, and notably specific about European contributions.
The original memorandum of understanding with Iran had drawn fire from both sides of the aisle in Washington. Nancy Pelosi called it a "gift to the Iranians," while Republican critics raised their own objections about the terms.
The deal's collapse now vindicates those who argued that Tehran could not be trusted to hold up its end of any agreement. Iran's decision to attack commercial shipping during a mourning period, a window that should have been the easiest stretch of the entire ceasefire to maintain, suggests the regime either could not or would not restrain its own military apparatus.
Congressional skeptics had sounded alarms for weeks. The Senate Armed Services Committee chair had warned that the memorandum's financial terms dwarfed even the Obama-era deal, raising the stakes of any Iranian betrayal.
That betrayal has now arrived.
Several critical questions hang over the escalation. No official casualty figures have emerged from either the American strikes or the Iranian retaliatory attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait. The extent of damage to the three commercial tankers is unreported. The precise terms of the blockade Trump is considering have not been spelled out. And the scope and timeline of Operation Epic Fury, beyond Rutte's claim of 5,000 European sorties, remain opaque.
Whether Trump's Wednesday evening strikes proceed as promised, and what targets they hit, will shape the next phase of a confrontation that has moved from diplomacy to open military exchange in a matter of hours.
Iran had every chance to keep the peace. It chose otherwise. Now it gets to find out what "hard" means when Trump says it twice in the same sentence.