Iran on Tuesday condemned the U.S. overnight strikes as evidence of Washington’s “bad faith and unreliability,” warning that the attacks could undermine ongoing negotiations aimed at reaching a deal to end the war.
The U.S. military has characterized the strikes in southern Iran as defensive, saying targets included missile launch sites and boats placing mines and said the U.S. acted with "restraint" in light of the weekslong cease-fire.
Iran's Foreign Ministry called the strikes a cease-fire violation and warned that Washington would bear responsibility for "all consequences," without details.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran will leave no act of aggression unanswered," it added in a statement.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Tuesday it had shot down and deterred drones and a fighter jet that entered its airspace, according to Iran’s official Mizan news agency, which did not specify when the incident occurred.
It wasn't immediately clear what the developments would mean for negotiations. The strikes came after Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf went to Qatar as part of the talks, which U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday were "proceeding nicely."
The strikes were the latest flare-up in the fragile cease-fire that began April 7 and has largely held.
Negotiations center in part on the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway off southern Iran through which a fifth of the world's crude oil and natural gas passed before the war began with U.S.-Israeli strikes in February. Tehran retaliated by effectively closing the strait, stranding hundreds of ships and shocking the global economy.
The Strait has become a powerful lever for Tehran in talks, joining the long-running issue of Iran's nuclear program and highly enriched uranium. Iran, in turn, wants the U.S. to lift its military blockade of Iranian ports that began on April 17.
The Strait is also a cause for growing concern, as fertilizer supplies are badly affected for vulnerable global farmers.
"What we are witnessing today is not only a geopolitical crisis, it is a systemic shock to the global agrifood system," the director-general of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, Qu Dongyu, said Tuesday.
Trump has introduced a new angle in negotiations for a deal on the war, saying any agreement to end the war should include a requirement for several additional countries, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to join the Abraham Accords, a series of U.S.-brokered diplomatic, economic and security agreements aimed at normalizing relations with Israel.
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates became the first countries to join in 2020; Sudan, Morocco and Kazakhstan have followed. Egypt and Jordan already formally recognize Israel and have long-standing peace treaties. Türkiye first recognized Israel in 1949.
Israel’s conduct against Palestinians, including in the genocidal war on Gaza, has alienated Gulf Arab states and the wider Muslim world, but Trump has been keen to build on the Abraham Accords, forged during his first term. He has even suggested that Iran eventually could sign on.
