US President Donald Trump accused Iran on Wednesday of taking too long to negotiate a peace deal and warned that the US will hit the country "very hard" if a deal is not finalised.
"We're going to be attacking them – attacking them very hard," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers."
Trump’s warnings at the White House and on social media came hours after Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan – all of which host US troops – came under Iranian fire. It was the second time this week that back-and-forth strikes have tested a two-month ceasefire. On Monday, Iran and Israel targeted each other.
Shortly after Trump spoke, the US military said it had fired on an oil tanker trying to transport oil from Iran in violation of its blockage on Iranian ports. It was the eighth merchant vessel disabled in the waters off Iran, US Central Command announced in a social media post Wednesday.
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India on Wednesday summoned the top US diplomat in New Delhi over the strike on a tanker off the coast of Oman, where three Indians are missing, two Indian sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Trump wouldn’t say if he planned to follow through on threats he made earlier in the war to attack bridges and utility plants in Iran. But he urged Iran to sign a deal with the US.
“We were really close to a deal but they keep tapping us along,” Trump said.
Trump's comments underlined the American leader's whipsaw approach to the war. Earlier this week, Trump suggested that a deal to end the conflict could be reached in a matter of days.
Iran, meanwhile, has proved resilient despite having faced weeks of heavy bombing. It is betting that its ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz – a crucial passageway for the world’s oil and natural gas – gives it a strong bargaining chip.
'Iran is all talk and no action'
Trump's remarks came after Iran and the US once again traded fire following the downing of an American helicopter, further straining the fragile ceasefire that took effect in April.
The exchange drew international calls for restraint on the eve of the World Cup, which the US is co-hosting and Iran is participating in.
Trump had said on Tuesday that talks to bring about a definitive end to the Middle East war were in the "final throes", only to offer a starkly different assessment a day later.
"Iran is all talk and no action," he said earlier Wednesday. "They've taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!"
In a sign that diplomacy was continuing, however, negotiators from Qatar – which along with Pakistan has been assisting in mediation efforts – travelled to Tehran on Wednesday "to meet with the Iranians in an effort to bridge the remaining gaps", a diplomat with knowledge of the situation said.
At a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres suggested that an imperfect ceasefire was preferable to a return to full-scale hostilities.
"We should not minimise the risks of a lesser fire becoming full fire, or in another word – full war," he said.
Warning to the Gulf
The war, which began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, threw the region into chaos and rattled global markets before the shaky truce began.
Iran said it attacked American bases in Jordan and Bahrain on Wednesday after the US carried out strikes on the Islamic republic in retaliation for the downing of a helicopter.
The Apache was the second crewed aircraft that Washington has confirmed to have been shot down by Iran during the war. Its two crew members were rescued, the US military said.
Bahrain said it intercepted and destroyed "a number of Iranian aerial attacks", while Jordan's military said it shot down five missiles, with no casualties or material damage.
The Kuwaiti military also said its air defences were engaging "hostile aerial targets". Iran has recently carried out deadly attacks there too.
Tehran's foreign ministry "reiterated the legal and moral responsibility" of its neighbours not to allow the US or Israel to use their territory for attacks.
US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said on X that it had earlier "struck Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz".
The violence sparked calls for de-escalation from Iranian allies Russia and China.
"We are extremely concerned about the new round of US-Iranian armed confrontation," a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said, urging "both sides to exercise restraint".
A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry likewise called on the warring parties to "stop intensifying the conflict and escalating the situation".
'We've packed our things'
Iran has insisted any deal to end the war must include a truce in Lebanon, which was drawn into the conflict when Iran-backed Hezbollah militants within its borders fired rockets at Israel on March 2.
Israel responded with a campaign of airstrikes and a ground invasion that has killed more than 3,600 people. Exchanges of fire with Hezbollah have not stopped despite a nominal truce.
On Wednesday, a medical source told AFP that Israeli strikes on south Lebanon had killed 12 people.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military told the entire southern city of Tyre to evacuate, with an AFP correspondent witnessing residents fleeing and heavy traffic heading north after the warning.
Another correspondent in the coastal city of Sidon, further north, saw displaced people arriving from Tyre, some with belongings strapped to the roofs of their cars.
On Wednesday, a strike hit the centre of Sidon, with an AFP correspondent seeing a car burning and emergency personnel heading to the scene after hearing a blast.
"We've packed our things, and we're leaving," Tyre resident Elias Barbour told AFP.
"What have we done wrong? What are we supposed to do?" he added, saying that he would go to his sister's home in Beirut "for a few days to see what happens".
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
