US hits Iranian rocket launchers off the Strait of Hormuz in first new attack in weeks

The U.S. military attacked Iranian rocket launchers positioned in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, marking its first offensive operation in a month, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

Explosions were heard near Larak Island, which lies in the waterway, Iranian media outlets reported.

Iranian forces had been preparing to launch rockets carrying mines into the strait, the unnamed U.S. official said. The waterway, a vital trade route, has emerged as a major flash point in the war.

Tehran responded with missile strikes aimed at Jordan, a U.S. official told CNN.

The missiles have been intercepted so far, the official said.

Last week, the U.S. completed an operation to clear mines from strait’s shipping lanes. Following the operation, President Donald Trump warned Iran that “any ship or boat placing new mines will be immediately and systematically destroyed.”

In response to the new offensive, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that the U.S. attack “will be answered by the sons of Iran and will result in the punishment of the aggressor,” Axios reported.

When reached for comment, a Pentagon spokesperson referred The Independent to U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East.

The war, which began in February when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, had largely settled into a stalemate in recent weeks with no clear end in sight.

Speaking with Fox News on Sunday, President Trump defended the Iran campaign, arguing the U.S. was winning the war, even if a final, durable peace deal had not been inked.

“I don’t need a signature on a piece of paper,” Trump said.

He argued that Democratic critics of the war were trying to sabotage the operation.

“They want our country to lose the war with Iran, which isn’t going to happen because we are absolutely winning easily,” Trump added.

The strait, which carried about 20 percent of the world’s oil before the conflict, has remained a central obstacle. The U.S. insists it must remain open to unrestricted shipping, while Iran says it has the right to manage traffic through the waterway.

Recently, the Trump administration signaled a shift toward imposing economic measures against Iran. Last week, the Treasury Department unveiled a multi-pronged campaign to “sever the economic lifelines that sustain the Iranian regime.”

“If we need to use kinetic strikes, we’ll use them,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday. “But economic pressure hurts them the most right now.”

In recent months, the Trump administration has maintained that Iran’s military and leadership have been severely weakened.

“We’ve wiped them out militarily,” Trump said in an interview earlier this month. “The navy’s gone, the air force is gone, the leadership is gone.” He said the killings of Iranian leaders, which have come at the hands of U.S. and Israeli attacks, have also complicated diplomacy because “nobody knows who’s leading.”

Thousands of U.S. strikes have been carried out across the country, sometimes continuing night after night. In Iran, 3,375 people have died and more than 30,000 have been injured, according to the World Health Organization.

The conflict has also taken a significant toll on the United States.

Eighteen U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds more wounded in the conflict, the Pentagon has said.

Last month, Hegseth told Congress that the cost of the war has surged to more than $37.5 billion. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also driven up fuel prices.

“The oil is going to come down like a rocket going the opposite direction as soon as we win that war, complete the war,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday night.

“We have control of the Hormuz strait. … We’ve swept out all the mines. We don’t have mines there now,” the president claimed.

Multiple recent polls indicate the war is broadly unpopular in the U.S. In a Reuters survey last month, 69 percent of respondents said that Trump has not clearly explained the goals of the conflict.