The United States launched a new wave of military strikes against Iran on Tuesday, hitting targets in the port cities of Bushehr and Bandar Abbas as President Donald Trump declared a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and vowed to impose a 20-percent levy on all cargo transiting the waterway. Iran answered with retaliatory missile and drone attacks on U.S.-linked targets in Bahrain, Jordan, and the strait itself, an escalation that sent oil prices surging more than five percent and reduced commercial shipping through the world's most important energy chokepoint to a trickle.
The strikes mark the third consecutive night of American military action against Iranian military infrastructure, as the Washington Examiner reported, and represent the sharpest escalation in a conflict that has simmered for nearly five months. U.S. Central Command said the operations were designed to "degrade Iran's ability to attack commercial shipping" in the strait, a narrow corridor through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil supply passes on any normal day.
Tuesday was not a normal day.
CENTCOM announced that a blockade of Iran's ports along the Strait of Hormuz would take effect at 2000 GMT Tuesday. Trump had previewed the move a day earlier on Truth Social, declaring that the United States would be "known as 'THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT'" and would levy a 20-percent fee on all cargo shipped through the waterway.
In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump put it more bluntly:
"Tell the Iranians to be ready. Let them know we're coming (and) there's not a d*** thing they can do about it."
The president also said a negotiated deal with Tehran remained possible, even as he threatened to destroy Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried nuclear site near Natanz where Western intelligence suspects Iran is constructing an undeclared uranium enrichment facility.
Trump formally notified Congress last week that the United States had resumed military conflict against Iran, a step the White House confirmed to AFP. That notification gives the Pentagon an additional 60 days to operate in the region without separate congressional approval, a timeline that underscores the administration's view that this fight may not end quickly.
The president has ordered successive waves of airstrikes since Iran resumed attacks on commercial vessels, each round broader in scope than the last.
Tehran did not absorb the blows quietly. Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced they had fired missiles and drones at Bahrain, targeting what they described as a residential building housing U.S. forces and other military facilities. Explosions and air-raid sirens rang through Manama, Bahrain's capital. Bahraini officials said they intercepted "several treacherous aerial attacks launched by Iran" and accused Tehran of deliberately targeting civilians.
Iran also launched strikes at Jordan, where officials said they shot down four incoming missiles. The Revolutionary Guards claimed the Jordan strikes hit U.S. forces at an air base and urged Jordanian citizens to issue a "serious demand for the removal of the occupying American bases from the region."
A spokesman for Iran's military command went further, warning that any collaboration by Gulf countries with the United States would be considered "an act of war." The threat was aimed squarely at the Gulf Arab states whose geography, bases, and ports make American power projection in the region possible.
The pattern of Iranian retaliation has widened steadily. The New York Post reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed retaliatory strikes on U.S. military targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, and threatened to shut off all regional energy export corridors benefiting the United States and its allies.
The human cost inside Iran continues to mount. At least 28 people have been killed there since renewed U.S. attacks began last week, AFP tallied, drawing on Iranian media and official announcements. Local authorities in Bushehr said the U.S. struck "four points" in the city, which also hosts Iran's only civilian nuclear power plant, as well as an Iranian border area near Iraq and Kuwait.
The commercial consequences arrived before the formal blockade did. Maritime tracker Kpler reported that only seven commodity vessels used the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, the quietest day for crossings since June 13, when a preliminary deal briefly boosted traffic. That figure excluded vessels hugging the Omani coast on a route not approved by Iran, but the collapse in volume was stark regardless.
Early Tuesday, a Norwegian tanker was hit by an explosion caused by what crisis-response company MTI Network described as "an unidentified device" off the Omani coast. Iran separately struck two ships in the strait itself. The UAE reported one crew member killed aboard one of the vessels hit.
Oil prices, which had already surged the day before, rose more than five percent on Tuesday. The combination of active military strikes, a declared blockade, and Iranian threats to close energy corridors has created the most volatile conditions in the strait since the conflict's earliest days.
The tensions have deep roots. The current cycle traces back to February, when U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran. Tehran responded by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. A ceasefire was agreed in April, and a preliminary deal in June eased restrictions and briefly restored shipping traffic. But that deal collapsed after Iran resumed firing on commercial vessels, prompting Trump to declare the memorandum of understanding void and reinstate sanctions and a blockade on Iranian ports.
Rich Lowry of National Review framed the situation as the collapse of a diplomatic fiction:
"What we may be witnessing now in the U.S.-Iran war is the end of a phony peace."
Lowry described a pattern of sham ceasefires and broken Iranian pledges to reopen the strait, a cycle in which Tehran pocketed concessions and then resumed provocations. The current conflict, he noted, has been ongoing for nearly five months as of mid-July.
The administration has framed its actions as both defensive and forward-looking. CENTCOM stated that strikes would "continue imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz." Trump posted separately that the strait "is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran."
That framing sits uneasily with some international observers. The United Nations condemned the renewed hostilities. U.N. rights chief Volker Turk called for an immediate ceasefire, warning that disruptions to the strait, which he described as "a vital lifeline on which millions are reliant", could produce severe humanitarian consequences, Fox News reported.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned Washington against adopting a policy of "piracy", a reference to the proposed 20-percent levy. Washington has historically opposed Tehran's desire to charge tolls in the strait, which international law generally forbids. Trump's declaration that the U.S. would now collect its own fee inverts the longstanding American position and introduces a new variable into an already volatile equation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded with pointed sarcasm on X, calling the principle that whoever guarantees safe passage should be compensated "absolutely right", but adding that Tehran would charge less. "20% is of course too much," Araghchi wrote.
The 60-day window created by Trump's congressional notification means the Pentagon has authority to sustain operations well into the fall without returning to Capitol Hill. The scope of the strikes, now spanning at least six Iranian locations including Bushehr, Bandar Abbas, Chah Bahar, Jask, Konarak, and Abu Musa, suggests the administration is not planning a limited engagement.
Iran's threats to treat Gulf state cooperation with the U.S. as an act of war raise the prospect of a wider regional confrontation. Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and Oman all host or support American military operations. If Tehran follows through, the conflict could spread far beyond the strait.
The threat environment extends beyond conventional warfare. Iran has also been linked to assassination plots targeting Trump himself, a backdrop that adds personal dimension to the president's willingness to confront Tehran directly.
Trump, for his part, has long criticized his predecessors' approach to Iran as weak and accommodating. The current posture, simultaneous strikes, a declared blockade, a proposed toll, and an explicit nuclear threat, represents the opposite of accommodation.
Whether it produces a deal or a deeper war remains the open question. What it has already produced is unmistakable: the busiest shipping lane on earth reduced to seven vessels in a day, oil prices climbing by the hour, and an American president who says he is ready for either outcome.
For decades, Washington told the world it would keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Now it says it will, on its terms and at its price. The Iranians, the markets, and every country that depends on Gulf energy are about to find out what that means.