Trump Declares Ceasefire with Iran Over
United States President Donald Trump has stated that the ceasefire with Iran is over. He made the remarks on Wednesday (8/7) after Washington launched an attack on the Islamic Republic, and Iran retaliated by targeting American military bases in Gulf states. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” Trump said at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, when asked if the ceasefire with Iran had now ended. “It’s a waste of time dealing with them,” he remarked, as reported by AFP.
The US military had earlier announced that its forces completed a new operation targeting Iranian air defences, missile launch sites, command networks, and military vessels in response to Tehran’s latest attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The US military stated that its forces struck more than 80 targets linked to Iran, in an operation they described as a “devastating blow against Iran to deliver a heavy impact”.
US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, announced that its forces launched an offensive operation targeting Iran’s air defence systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, and more than 60 small craft belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in and around the Strait of Hormuz. In a statement on social media platform X, CENTCOM said the US strikes were launched as a “direct response to the latest Iranian attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz”. CENTCOM further described the strikes as a “devastating blow against Iran to deliver a heavy impact for its actions in targeting and attacking commercial ships crewed by innocent civilians in international shipping lanes”.
In response to the US strikes, the IRGC launched retaliatory attacks on dozens of US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait. “In an initial response to this aggression, the IRGC Navy and Air Force conducted a combined missile and drone operation, striking 85 major US military facilities in the two countries, while also shooting down an MQ-9 drone,” the IRGC said in a statement broadcast by Iranian state television IRIB, as reported by AFP. According to Al Jazeera, the IRGC stated that the Iranian strikes also hit the US Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain and the Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait. The operation was described as an “initial response” to what it called a violation of the ceasefire and agreement by the US.