Iran launches surprise attack on US base

The US has said it successfully intercepted a “surprise attack” by Iran on American forces in the Middle East.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces “launched multiple ballistic missiles in an attempted surprise attack on US forces”, US Central Command said on Tuesday evening.

The attacks were reported to have taken place at 5.45 pm on Tuesday – local time in Washington.

US Central Command did not provide further details about the exact location of the strikes, beyond saying that they had been targeting “US forces in the Middle East”.

It marks yet another return to conflict, despite Donald Trump saying on Monday that there were “very friendly negotiations going on” during a lull in fighting.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump also hosted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, at the White House on the five-month anniversary of the war.

It is the first time the pair have met since the US and Israel launched joint attacks against Iran on Feb 28, triggering the conflict in the Middle East.

The Israeli leader described the 90-minute meeting on Tuesday as “one of the best conversations” he has had with Mr Trump, and said the pair had discussed “our common goal: ensuring that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons”.

Mr Trump also welcomed Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, for a closed-door meeting in the White House on Tuesday to discuss how Washington might assist Kyiv with missile defence systems.

Karoline Leavitt, Mr Trump’s press secretary, posted on X that meetings with both foreign leaders had been “positive and productive!”

A return to missile strikes in the Middle East will mark a blow for Mr Trump, who has increasingly sought an exit from the conflict before the US midterm elections in November.

On Monday, Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that “there’s a good chance that something could happen” during a period of diplomatic negotiations, while warning that the US would “go back to doing what we were doing” if those talks failed.

Stop-start attacks by both sides over the past few months have repeatedly shattered tentative ceasefire agreements.

In a separate joint operation on Tuesday, US and Saudi forces struck several IRGC-directed militia bases in eastern Iraq after Tehran carried out 30 drone attacks against US personnel and Saudi energy infrastructure, according to US Central Command.

Four US soldiers were killed earlier this month during the last ceasefire breakdown.

Three American service members were killed on July 17 when an Iranian missile hit their sleeping barracks at a US base in Jordan, while a fourth soldier was killed in a separate incident in Erbil, Iraq, on July 19.

Mr Trump attended a ceremony in Delaware last week honouring the four soldiers after their bodies were returned to American soil in flag-draped caskets.

The US president has repeatedly promised to obliterate Iran if it does not agree to significant compromises, and renewed that pledge on Tuesday.

“They know I’m going to do that if they don’t make a deal,” he told Fox News.

“The bridges are going to be gone, literally in less than ... I would say in two hours, most of the bridges, the major bridges will all be gone, and the power plants in one day,” he said.

Mr Trump added: “[Iran] cannot have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. And they’ve agreed to that. Essentially, we have to get them to, you know, make it formal.”

The two sides also remain stuck over control of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply passed each day before the conflict.

Iran said that it had rejected an Omani proposal to evenly divide control of the strait between the two countries, which sit either side of the channel.

Tehran said it instead wanted the lion’s share of the waterway – something it did not officially control before the conflict broke out.

The issue has caused the war to spill beyond Iran’s borders in recent weeks. Houthi militants in Yemen attacked Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea last week, prompting retaliatory strikes from both Riyadh and Yemeni allies.

It pushed oil prices back up to $100 (£75) a barrel last Thursday for the first time since May, extending the global shockwaves of the five-month war.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]