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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that American forces would strike Iran again “today,” accusing Tehran of downing a US army Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz and delaying an end-war deal with Washington that would bar it from “ever” obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Trump’s remarks came hours after the US and Iran exchanged missile strikes against dozens of targets on Wednesday morning.
“We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them again hard today,” the US president said, adding that Iranian forces “shot at our helicopter” and that the two crew members who were on board were rescued and are “fortunately okay.”
Trump a day earlier stated that “the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz,” vowing that “the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”
Later on Tuesday, the US Central Command said its “forces struck Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz with precision munitions from U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets."
The operation was "a proportional response to recent attacks on U.S. forces and international commercial ships transiting regional waters,” the Command added.
For its part, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement that it struck at least 21 alleged US targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan in the early hours of Wednesday.
It added that its forces used long-range solid-fuel missiles which “targeted and destroyed” four significant sites, including “F-35 fighter jet hangars at the airbase and the command-and-control center of the child-killing US army in al-Azraq, Jordan."
The escalation on Wednesday also followed a statement by Iran’s chief diplomat Abbas Araghchi, who warned foreign forces “in proximity to our territory” that they are “at constant risk on account of human error, accidents, or being caught in crossfire,” urging them to “exit as soon as possible.”
Araghchi further noted that while Tehran “prefers the language of diplomacy,” its “brave warriors know how to speak other languages too.”
Importantly, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday addressed diplomatic efforts to reach an end-of-war deal with Tehran, accusing the Iranian side of stalling progress, saying, “We’re really close to the deal, but they keep tapping us along.”
He added, “I’ve been working with Iran for a number of months and they should sign the deal. It’s a good deal,” which “totally prohibits them from ever having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
