US says retaliatory strikes against Iran end as Tehran targets US bases

WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday (Jun 9) launched strikes against Iran after President Donald Trump said Tehran had shot down a US Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz, deepening doubts over a potential peace deal and further straining a fragile ceasefire.

The US military said on X it had targeted Iranian air defence, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz. 

US Central Command described the operation as a “proportional response” to recent attacks on US forces and commercial shipping. "I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that's what this one is," Trump told ABC News.

The strikes began at 5pm ET (Wednesday, 5am, Singapore time), and Central Command posted just before 9pm ET that they had ended.

Iran's state media reported that Qeshm island and the port city of Sirik in the Strait of Hormuz were attacked.

Sounds of explosions were heard in nearby Bandar Abbas, and later in the vicinity of Jask county, near the entrance to the strait, Iranian media reported, citing local sources and residents.

Some US bases in the region were targeted in response to the strikes, Iranian media cited the country's top joint military command, Khatam al-Anbiya, as saying.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they attacked the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain with drones and threatened "more severe responses" if hostilities continued, according to media. 

Bahrain's Interior Ministry said a warning siren had been sounded and urged the public to head to safety. Air defences had repelled Iranian attacks, a media adviser to Bahrain's King said soon after in a post on X.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports. Oil prices climbed about 1 per cent in early Asian trade on Wednesday following the escalation in hostilities.

The Apache was brought down by a one-way Iranian attack drone, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two US pilots involved in the helicopter incident were uninjured, according to Trump.

Iran's state media cited a military source as saying that no offensive air military operations had been conducted in the Strait of Hormuz in the previous 24 hours.

Following the initial US strikes, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that the country would "leave no attack or threat unanswered".

In an earlier post, he did not directly address the helicopter incident, but said foreign forces in the region risked being involved in accidents or crossfire.

"To reduce risk, best solution is for them to leave," he wrote.

Iran and Israel exchanged airstrikes earlier this week, killing two people in Tehran.

Trump told The Wall Street Journal during a phone call on Tuesday that the helicopter incident "wasn’t a big deal" and stressed that “the pilot is fine".

However, the episode could well add further strain to efforts to broker a peace deal to end the wider Middle East war and reopen Hormuz, a vital conduit for petroleum and other commodities.

Trump has repeatedly said Iran and the United States are close to an agreement, though there have been few signs of progress since a tenuous ceasefire took effect in early April.

A US Navy surface drone found and rescued the two crew, the US military said, after the US Army attack helicopter went down in waters near Oman's coast while on patrol at around 3am on Tuesday.

The US military's Central Command gave no reason for the crash. It said the soldiers were rescued after two hours and said they were in stable condition - a more cautious assessment than Trump's description.

Analysts said that despite the latest developments, the ceasefire is likely to hold. 

Ryan Bohl, senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at geopolitical consultancy RANE, said Iran appears to have adopted a largely "reactionary" stance. 

"The Iranians will take some opportunistic chances for harassment and disruption, like they did with shooting down the Apache helicopter. But they aren't likely to go back to full-scale escalation unless the US has done so in turn," he noted on CNA's Asia First. 

"(But if) there's an incident where the Iranians carry out a provocation that results in damage to something the Americans really care about – loss of civilians or loss of military personnel, then the US might go back into full-scale escalation in reaction."

ISRAEL HITS LEBANON'S TYRE PORT CITY, KILLING EIGHT

In a parallel conflict, Israel struck the historic port city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, killing at least eight people. It was the deadliest strike on the city since fighting erupted in Lebanon in early March, when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel.

A video verified by Reuters showed debris strewn across a road at the site of the attack.

Israel's refusal to end its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah has hindered Trump's efforts to extend a tenuous ceasefire in the wider US-Israeli war with Iran into a durable settlement.

Iran and Israel exchanged airstrikes earlier this week, killing two people in Tehran.

Trump told Axios on Monday he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to return to war with Iran: "I said, 'Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon.'" 

Tehran has long said any peace deal with Washington depends in part on an end to fighting in Lebanon.

In northern Israel on Tuesday, Israeli troops operating in the Ramim Ridge area close to Lebanon's border killed one person in an incident in which they returned fire, the military said.

Israel has never halted its Lebanon campaign, which has killed thousands of people, saying the conflict should be treated separately from any US-Iranian ceasefire. Hezbollah has also continued its attacks.

At the same time, Tehran has continued to block most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which before the war carried a fifth of the world's crude oil and liquefied natural gas. Washington has imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Tuesday that ship traffic through Hormuz is rising "very meaningfully", but added it would take many months to get back to normal flows of energy once the war is over. 

Trump has said any peace deal must ensure Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon. Iran's demands include the lifting of international sanctions, the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets and recognition of its control of the strait.