The Iran War entered its 34th day Thursday after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would continue to strike Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” while claiming that “discussions” with Iran to end the war are “ongoing.”
“We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” Trump said in a Wednesday evening address to the nation, his first since the war began.
A spokesman for Iran’s military said overnight that future operations would be “more crushing, extensive, and devastating.” and vowed the conflict would continue until the U.S. and Israel face “humiliation, disgrace, permanent regret, defeat, and surrender.”
Following Trump’s announcement, global stocks fell sharply on Thursday morning while the price of Brent crude oil rose above $109 per barrel. Gas prices remained elevated, with AAA reporting the national average regular gas price at $4.08 per gallon.
The IRGC said Thursday it had launched its 90th wave of missile and drone strikes targeting Israeli and U.S. military sites across the region. In a statement carried by Iran’s Fars News Agency, the IRGC said strikes targeted Israeli airbases at Tel Nof and Palmachim, as well as areas around Ben Gurion Airport and “military gathering centers” in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Eilat, the Negev desert, and Beersheba.
The statement also claimed attacks on U.S. bases in the Gulf and said a radar system at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates was “completely destroyed.”
Hossein Kermanpour, spokesman for Iran’s Health Ministry, posted photos to X on Thursday of an overnight strike on the Pasteur Institute of Iran. He called the attack “a direct assault on international health security” and asked the WHO and ICRC to condemn the attack and support reconstruction. Fars News reported that American-Israeli strikes hit several areas around Azimieh in Karaj on Thursday, including the B1 Bridge, with multiple people reported injured.
In his Wednesday night address, Trump repeated his suggestion that countries affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz should turn to U.S. energy supplies. “Buy oil from the United States of America, we have plenty, we have so much,” he said. The president also urged them to reopen the waterway themselves: “Go to the Strait and just take it! Protect it!”
French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday it was “unrealistic” to believe the Strait of Hormuz could be reopened by military force, arguing that such an operation “would take forever, and would expose all those who go through the strait to risks from the Revolutionary Guards and also from ballistic missiles.”
Iranian officials on Wednesday and Thursday said Iran and Oman are moving to formalize a post–war framework for controlling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying the waterway’s future “is a matter for Iran and Oman” and Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi saying the two sides are drafting a joint peacetime navigation protocol.
In remarks to Al Jazeera and Sputnik, the officials said vessels would be expected to coordinate in advance with Iranian and Omani authorities, while warning that ships from states involved in the conflict with Iran would be denied passage.
The Iranian hacker group Handala claimed Wednesday it had breached Israeli defense contractor PSK WIND Technologies, alleging it exfiltrated sensitive data tied to integrated command-and-control systems used in Israeli air defense and other military infrastructure.
Israeli airstrikes attacked southern Lebanon overnight, collapsing a building in Zebdine. Raids in Beirut’s Jnah district killed at least five and wounded 21. The UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher told the Security Council on Tuesday that Lebanon is at its “breaking point,” and warned that “a cycle of coercive displacement is unfolding,” with the UN saying that over 1.1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced and more than 1,240 killed in the past four weeks.
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