US strikes Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz, official says, leaving unclear what comes next

The Unit­ed States launched strikes on Iran­ian tar­gets, a U.S. of­fi­cial said, in what ap­peared to be a lim­it­ed op­er­a­tion on the eve of Tues­day’s cru­cial midterm elec­tions.

Iran­ian state me­dia re­port­ed ex­plo­sions be­ing heard on the is­lands of Qeshm and Hengam in the strate­gic Strait of Hor­muz, and in the near­by main­land area of Ban­dar Ab­bas. Un­like ear­li­er in the war, the strikes were not pub­licly an­nounced.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump pre­vi­ous­ly said the U.S. wouldn’t launch strikes on Iran be­fore the midterms. The un­pop­u­lar war and the re­sult­ing im­pact on U.S. gaso­line prices and oth­er parts of the econ­o­my have been a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty for his Re­pub­li­can Par­ty as it tries to keep con­trol of Con­gress.

A U.S. of­fi­cial, who wasn’t au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said Mon­day that the strikes tar­get­ed Ira­ni­ans us­ing sur­face-to-air mis­siles against the U.S. in the strait. The move came as Iran said it had a two-day plan to re­open the crit­i­cal wa­ter­way, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil sup­ply flowed dur­ing peace­time, and re­sume nu­clear talks with the Unit­ed States.

Vice Pres­i­dent Vance buoyed hopes for a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment

Back-chan­nel ne­go­ti­a­tions have al­so been play­ing out as Is­rael and some Mid­dle East al­lies lob­by Trump on the way ahead in the more than 8-month-old war that’s rat­tled the glob­al econ­o­my and wreaked hav­oc on Iran.

Speak­ing be­fore the U.S. of­fi­cial con­firmed strikes, U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance told re­porters Mon­day that he and Trump “both feel pret­ty good about the prospects for po­ten­tial­ly com­ing to a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment.”

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion was last known to have car­ried out at­tacks in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. But thou­sands of U.S. troops re­main in the wa­ters off Iran to main­tain a naval block­ade aimed at pre­vent­ing tankers car­ry­ing Iran­ian oil from reach­ing the glob­al mar­ket. An­oth­er air­craft car­ri­er and thou­sands of ad­di­tion­al troops are al­so on their way to the Mid­dle East.

The re­gion is on edge about the prospects of the U.S. re­sum­ing full-scale op­er­a­tions against Iran, and the new strikes are like­ly to re­new con­cerns.

Ne­tanyahu pushed Trump for strikes in a week­end call

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu has pushed for an­oth­er wave of strikes on Iran af­ter the U.S. elec­tions, ac­cord­ing to two re­gion­al of­fi­cials and a third per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter.

A re­turn to full-scale war with Iran could help Ne­tanyahu form an emer­gency gov­ern­ment af­ter he and his far-right al­lies lost their par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty in last week’s elec­tions. Trump has al­ter­nat­ed be­tween threat­en­ing ma­jor strikes and push­ing for a deal with Iran.

The two of­fi­cials said diplo­mat­ic ef­forts have made progress and that me­di­a­tors are try­ing to ad­vance a frame­work for Iran to cease its at­tacks in the Strait of Hor­muz in re­turn for the U.S. lift­ing its block­ade on Iran’s ports.

They said more talks are planned for this week. The two of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were dis­cussing clas­si­fied brief­in­gs they had re­ceived from Amer­i­can and, in one case, Is­raeli of­fi­cials. The third per­son, who was briefed on the call, was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and al­so spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

Ira­ni­ans keep­ing watch on U.S. elec­tions

Some peo­ple in Tehran were hope­ful that the midterm elec­tions would bring a shift in U.S. poli­cies.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple need to make a fun­da­men­tal de­ci­sion and bring about re­al change. They need to put an end to the lead­er­ship of some­one who is so ex­treme and who runs things through lies, some­one who sup­ports Is­rael, a coun­try that is lit­er­al­ly killing chil­dren,” said 69-year-old Reza Reza­ei.

He said he hopes for changes that will “bring about peace and sta­bil­i­ty, not just for Amer­i­cans, but for the whole world.”

One woman was less op­ti­mistic.

“It doesn’t re­al­ly make much dif­fer­ence who comes in­to pow­er,” said Ra­heleh Movah­hed, al­so of Tehran. “The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and its poli­cies have al­ways had a prob­lem with us. I’m not talk­ing about the Amer­i­can peo­ple, mind you. I’m talk­ing about their poli­cies.”

Iran’s chief ne­go­tia­tor says it’s up to the US to pre­vent re­newed war

Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion quot­ed the coun­try’s chief ne­go­tia­tor and par­lia­ment speak­er, Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf, as say­ing on Tues­day that Iran had “de­liv­ered a firm and ra­tio­nal re­sponse to the Amer­i­can side. The ball is now in Amer­i­ca’s court to pre­vent war.” It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear what re­sponse he was re­fer­ring to.

Qal­ibaf al­so warned that Iran’s armed forces re­mained at the high­est lev­el of de­fen­sive readi­ness.

“If Wash­ing­ton makes an­oth­er strate­gic mis­cal­cu­la­tion, it should know that this time it will face a new bat­tle­field and will find it­self even more des­per­ate than it is to­day,” he said.

Iran­ian au­thor­i­ties an­nounce plans to train 1 mil­lion para­mil­i­tary vol­un­teers

Iran opened its third mil­i­tary train­ing cen­ter in Tehran on Mon­day as au­thor­i­ties an­nounced plans to train 1 mil­lion para­mil­i­tary vol­un­teers na­tion­wide, amid fears of re­newed con­flict.

Mem­bers of the Basij, a para­mil­i­tary force af­fil­i­at­ed with Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard, at­tend­ed the in­au­gu­ra­tion, the semi­of­fi­cial IS­NA news agency re­port­ed.

“Start­ing this week, across the coun­try 1,500 train­ing bases will start work­ing in all cities and towns, and will aim for train­ing 1 mil­lion sac­ri­fi­cial vol­un­teers,” said Ali Kowsari, the Basij’s deputy head for train­ing.

Two sim­i­lar cen­ters pre­vi­ous­ly opened in Tehran in Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber. —(AP)

________

Sto­ry by MICHELLE L. PRICE, SAMY MAGDY and ELE­NA BE­CA­TOROS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Aamer Mad­hani and Cara An­na con­tributed to this re­port.