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US forces shot down an Iranian drone after it approached a US Navy aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, and later responded to a separate incident involving a US-flagged merchant vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, US Central Command said on Tuesday.
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces harassed a US-flagged, US-crewed merchant vessel lawfully transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM spokesman Tim Hawkins said.
Hawkins said US forces earlier downed an Iranian Shahed-139 drone after it flew aggressively toward the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in international waters about 500 miles from Iran’s southern coast.
“An F-35C fighter jet from Abraham Lincoln shot down the Iranian drone in self-defense and to protect the aircraft carrier and personnel on board,” Hawkins said, adding that no US service members were harmed and no US equipment was damaged.
He added that two IRGC boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone later approached the tanker M/V Stena Imperative at high speed and threatened to board it, prompting the guided-missile destroyer USS McFaul to escort the vessel with defensive air support until the situation de-escalated.
An Iranian state TV pundit and insider openly threatened the United Arab Emirates, saying that five key economic and technology zones in Dubai would become “legitimate targets” if the United States attacks Iran.
Mostafa Khoshcheshm, speaking on the IRGC-linked TV station Ofogh, named civilian infrastructure including the Dubai Airport Free Zone, Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai Internet City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, and Jebel Ali Free Zone, marking a sharp escalation in rhetoric that explicitly targets commercial and financial centers.
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Tuesday shared its drawing of the day, an illustration depicting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a commentary on rising tensions between Iran and the United States.
The illustration by artist Biche and posted on the magazine’s X account, carries the caption “Khamenei serene in the face of the American threat,” alongside a speech bubble that reads: “They won’t manage to kill more Iranians than we do.”
Conflicting voices in Tehran on the competing prospects of war and diplomacy with Washington may be deliberate, but they more likely reflect an absence of consensus at the top.
A quick look at the main headlines on the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency on Monday captured the mood in Tehran: “Possibility of Iran–US Negotiations Confirmed,” “Implications for America if War Spreads Across the Region,” and “With Trump’s Conditions, There Will Be No Negotiations.”
Together, they betray a system simultaneously preparing for talks, threatening escalation, and insisting negotiations are impossible.
Despite the government’s efforts to project calm beneath Tehran’s smog-covered skyline, a speech on Sunday by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei only deepened the sense of foreboding.
Khamenei recounted a joke from his native province of Khorasan about a man boasting of how close he was to marrying the woman he loved. “Only two steps remain,” the man says. “I ask her father for her hand, and he replies: ‘How dare you!’”
Those seated around Khamenei, including his financial confidant Mohammad Mokhber, smiled uncertainly—perhaps only gradually realizing that, in Khamenei’s telling, the hopeful suitor was US President Donald Trump, and the disapproving father was Khamenei himself.
‘American graveyard’
For opportunistic politicians and commentators in Tehran, the message was unmistakable: recent claims by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and security chief Ali Larijani about ongoing negotiations with Washington mattered far less than the Supreme Leader’s evident reluctance to engage.
On the central question—whether Iran is prepared to make concessions—Khamenei remains firmly unwilling to yield.
Hardliners, who had briefly lowered their volume in anticipation of a possible diplomatic opening, appeared to have received the memo and quickly returned to form.
In parliament, the cleric Mohammad Taghi Naghdali declared that Iran should not only close the Strait of Hormuz but also disrupt Europe’s shipping routes and gas export networks, while calling for reduced cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The rhetoric soon veered into the absurd. The managing director of Tehran’s main cemetery, Behesht-e Zahra, claimed he had prepared 5,000 graves for US soldiers he believed would be killed on the first day of a war with Iran.
The statement was swiftly refuted by Tehran city councillor Jafar Tashakori, who warned that reckless remarks could trigger crises “far beyond domestic politics.”
Vested interests
Even seasoned analysts struggled to impose coherence on the moment. Political commentator Ali Bigdeli said no one could say with certainty whether war was coming, arguing that Iran’s only viable path forward lay in direct talks with the United States.
While Iran’s official position, articulated by Araghchi, is that any talks must be confined to the nuclear file, Bigdeli cautioned that Washington’s ambitions extend to Tehran’s missile program and its regional allies.
“Trump is not interested in a direct war with Iran,” Bigdeli told the moderate outlet Khabar Online. “But he is unlikely to leave the region with his armada without achieving something.”
Ebrahim Rezai, spokesperson for parliament’s National Security Committee, cited a briefing by IRGC Aerospace Force commanders to assert that any US attack would trap American forces in a regional war.
Yet another conservative figure, Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, cautioned that those beating the drums of war in Tehran were playing into Israel’s hands.
Taken together, the cacophony points less to confidence than to paralysis: a system torn between waiting for a signal from the top and being pulled in opposing directions by vested interests, each pressing for the outcome it prefers.
Armed Iranian boats tried to stop a US-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials.
The report cited maritime security firm Vanguard Tech as saying in a message to clients that six Iranian gunboats armed with 50-caliber machine guns approached the tanker as it entered the strategic waterway and ordered it to shut down its engines and prepare to be boarded. The vessel instead increased speed and was later escorted by a US warship, the report said.
Earlier, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency said it had received a report of an incident involving a vessel about 16 nautical miles north of Oman, within the inbound traffic separation scheme of the Strait of Hormuz.
