The US military said it shot down four Iranian drones that were launched toward the strait of Hormuz and struck coastal surveillance radar sites in response.
“The attack drones posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic,” US central command (Centcom) said on social media. The military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports in response to Tehran’s chokehold on the strait – a crucial corridor for global oil and natural gas shipments – which has sent energy prices spiking.
It was the latest in a series of back-and-forth attacks that have strained the tenuous ceasefire in the war and harmed efforts to reach a deal to extend the truce.
Earlier this week, Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person, wounding dozens and briefly closing the airfield.
Despite the attacks raising new concerns that the ceasefire could collapse, US president Donald Trump told reporters on Friday “the situation with Iran seems to be going quite well”.
“We’re going to come out of Iran very quickly and it’s going to be very strong one way or the other, whether it’s a piece of paper or the very tough way,” Trump said at an event with farmers in Wisconsin. “The very tough way is maybe the easier way, but we’re going to come out, and your fertiliser prices are going to go way down, just like they were four months ago.”
In other comments on Friday, Trump said Iran still has more than 20% of its missiles left, a figure for the stockpile that was higher than that of 18% which Trump gave last month. He has often claimed to have completely destroyed Iran’s ability to wage war.
“They still have capacity. They have some missiles, they have some drones. I would say, percentage wise, maybe 21, 22% of their missiles,” Trump told NBC News in an interview.
His administration has also touted the latest ceasefire agreed to this week by the Lebanese government and Israel after US-brokered talks in Washington. That’s despite Iranian-backed Hezbollah – who were not party to the talks – rejecting the agreement and new attacks being launched by both sides.
The fighting in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have seized large swaths of the south, also threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the strait of Hormuz. Iran has demanded that any lasting truce extend to Lebanon.
With the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
