Trump Threatens Further Iran Strikes as US-Iran Fighting Escalates

• Death toll from latest US attacks rises to 18, with at least 108 people wounded, Iranian officials say

US President Donald Trump has threatened further military strikes against Iran, saying Washington could attack “anytime we want” as the death toll from the latest US attacks rose to 18, according to Iranian officials.

The threat came on Wednesday after the United States and Iran exchanged their largest barrage of attacks since July, with US forces striking cities and areas along Iran’s southern coast near the Strait of Hormuz.

Among the locations hit was the city of Kuhestak, where Iranian officials said a wedding gathering was struck.

Iran subsequently launched retaliatory attacks against US bases across the Middle East, including in Bahrain, Iraq and Jordan.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said the United States had “hit them very hard last night” and claimed the attacks had destroyed newly built Iranian military equipment along the Strait of Hormuz.

“It was a very heavy attack last night. And we’re prepared to do another one. And anytime we want,” Trump said.

Iranian officials said 18 people were killed in the US strikes and at least 108 others were wounded.

Health Minister Mohammad-Reza Zafarghandi said two children were among those killed. One was a four-year-old child who died in the strike on the wedding gathering in Kuhestak, in Sirik County.

At least four people were reported killed in that attack.

Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, described the strike as a “war crime” and rejected US claims that its forces do not target civilians.

“The reality is so horrifying that even American propaganda has never dared make the claim [the US military] is making today. Sirik is not a story. The civilians are real. The victims are real,” Baghaei wrote on X.

Iranian media reported that funerals for the four victims from Kuhestak were scheduled for Thursday.

Rising political and economic pressure

The conflict has contributed to a sharp rise in oil prices, disrupted the global economy and created growing political difficulties for Trump’s Republican Party ahead of the November midterm elections.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll in August found that 31 per cent of Americans approved of the war, while about 63 per cent disapproved. Voters have expressed particular concern about rising petrol prices.

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, had climbed to about $95 a barrel, more than 30 per cent above its level at the start of the war, according to the figures cited in the Al Jazeera report.

Trump’s approval rating also fell from 40 per cent to 33 per cent during the conflict, according to the Reuters/Ipsos polling cited by Al Jazeera.

Trump said on Wednesday that he did not expect the renewed military campaign to continue for long and rejected the suggestion that the November elections were influencing his Iran policy.

“Number one, I’m not running. My party is running, and I’m going to help my party,” he said.

“But I think my party respects the fact that we’re not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has denied seeking to develop a nuclear weapon.

Strait of Hormuz under pressure

Tariq Khan, a retired Pakistani lieutenant-general and former commander of the Pakistan Army’s Frontier Corps, told Al Jazeera that the United States was in an increasingly difficult strategic position.

“The US has not succeeded in restoring the maritime environment that existed before the war, and is now expending military resources to deal with a problem the war itself helped create,” Khan said, referring to Iran’s restrictions on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The waterway previously carried roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil. According to Al Jazeera, Iran restricted shipping through the strait following US and Israeli strikes that began the war on February 18.

Despite repeated US assertions that the waterway remains open, only a small number of vessels are reportedly passing through each day, while Iran has continued to target ships attempting the crossing.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday that two oil tankers had struck mines and been disabled while attempting what it described as an unauthorised transit.

Separately, Saudi shipping company Bahri reported that two Filipino sailors were killed in an attack on its vessel earlier in the week.

Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority, established by Tehran to police the waterway, also added 11 ships to its blacklist over alleged “noncompliance”, bringing the reported total to 56.

The authority said the vessels could face fines, seizure or confiscation unless they submitted the required documentation before attempting to cross the strait.

Trump has meanwhile maintained that US forces control the waterway and are helping vessels transport oil through it.

“We are, for the most part, doing it without trouble. Every once in a while they shoot a drone, and we knock it down. We have control, very strong control,” he said.

Khan said Iran understood that it could not defeat the United States in a conventional war and was therefore seeking to increase the military, economic and political costs of the conflict.

“If Trump escalates, Iran can portray America as being drawn deeper into another Middle Eastern war; if he restrains himself, Tehran can claim that American military superiority cannot compel Iran to surrender,” he said.

“Iran does not need a battlefield victory; it needs to remain standing, keep the economic disruption alive, and make the war politically costly for the US.”