The latest cycle began with a US strike on Revolutionary Guards targets on Larak Island in Hormozgan province Sunday night, after a period in which Washington had increasingly emphasized economic pressure, a naval blockade and additional sanctions on Iran.
Iranian authorities initially reported two deaths, but the toll later rose to three after one of the wounded died in hospital, according to the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency.
US Central Command said the Larak strike targeted an “imminent threat,” alleging Revolutionary Guards forces were preparing to launch rockets carrying sea mines toward the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran rejected that account.
Iran responded early Monday with missile and drone attacks on two US bases in Jordan, according to the Revolutionary Guards, which said it had targeted technical and maintenance infrastructure and areas where fighter jets were stationed. Iran’s army separately said it had launched dozens of explosive drones at US personnel and helicopters at Al Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.
Iran also said after the Larak strike that its forces had shot down US MQ-9 drones over and east of the Strait of Hormuz. There was no immediate US confirmation of those claims.
The confrontation escalated further Tuesday when President Donald Trump announced “large and powerful” US strikes on Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz, warning Tehran that retaliation would trigger attacks at a “much harder and higher level.”
CENTCOM later said it had completed a new wave of strikes against Iranian military targets including air defenses, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites. US officials told Axios that around 100 targets were struck.
Trump later told Fox News that Iranian radar systems were among the targets.
“They tried to rebuild their radar because they can’t see anything,” he said. “We waited until it was almost built and then we hit it.”
Iran responded with another round of missile and drone attacks on US positions across the region. The Revolutionary Guards said it targeted US facilities in Jordan and Erbil, while Iran’s army said it launched a large-scale drone attack on Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain. Bahrain said its air defenses intercepted and destroyed Iranian drones over the kingdom.
The IRGC also said it had begun responding to the latest US strikes and claimed its air defenses had shot down what it called the 50th US MQ-9 drone. The claim has not been independently confirmed.
Calls for a change in strategy
The widening exchange has unfolded alongside an increasingly explicit debate inside Iran over whether its armed forces should move from retaliating after attacks toward acting when they detect signs that an attack is imminent.
Iran’s leadership has not formally announced any shift toward a preemptive doctrine.
But even before Trump announced Tuesday’s new strikes, political figures close to the establishment were arguing that the confrontation had exposed the limits of diplomacy and of waiting to respond after US military action.
Ali Gholhaki, a political activist close to parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, argued Tuesday that the Larak strike had demonstrated the “audacity of the United States” and showed that Washington was prepared to resume significant military action after a period of relative restraint.
He also said expectations of reviving the Islamabad understanding had been disappointed.
“It seems that resolving the issues in the ‘military field’ — given the conditions inside and outside Iran — will be more feasible than ‘diplomacy,’” he wrote.
The argument contrasts with President Masoud Pezeshkian’s continued insistence Tuesday that Iran was prepared to return to the Islamabad memorandum if the United States resumed compliance with its commitments.
Nour News, a website close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tuesday that the Larak attack and Iran’s response should not be viewed simply as another cycle of “attack and retaliation,” but as a “sign of a change in the battlefield.”
The website linked Mohsen Rezaei’s appointment as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council to an approach aimed at raising the costs of US military decisions and shifting some of the war’s pressure toward the US economy and domestic politics.
“In the previous model, the United States attacked and Iran responded to maintain deterrence. But in the new model, the response is not only to punish the aggressor; rather, the action must be designed in a way that makes the next US decision more difficult and costly,” Nour News wrote.
It argued that Iran was seeking to confront Washington with a dilemma: restraint by the United States could be interpreted in Tehran as evidence that the threat of force had lost some of its deterrent value, while further US attacks could raise risks to energy supplies and economic stability.
Tasnim, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, similarly portrayed the speed of Iran’s response to the Larak strike as evidence that the gap between political decision-making and military action was narrowing.
The agency argued that Iran should move from an “immediate response after an attack” toward readiness for “action at the first serious signs of an attack,” while acknowledging the political and strategic risks of such a shift.
Hardline lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian went further, openly calling for a preemptive attack on US interests across the Middle East.
“Given the enemy’s depleted war reserves, rising fuel prices and the proximity of the US congressional elections, the enemy is seeking to reduce tensions,” Nabavian wrote on X. “So now is the best time for a preemptive attack on US interests in the region, forcing the enemy to retreat and breaking the blockade.”
He described failing to act as “wasting the opportunity.”
The calls do not amount to an announced change in Iranian military doctrine. But they show a growing argument among hardline and security-linked voices that waiting for each US strike before responding leaves Washington with too much control over the pace of escalation.
Hormuz becomes central to military calculus
The debate is closely tied to the struggle over the Strait of Hormuz, where both sides increasingly portray military pressure and control of commercial shipping as part of the same confrontation.
Iranian officials continue to insist that ships cannot transit the strategic waterway without coordination with Tehran. Lawmaker Esmail Kosari said Tuesday that vessels attempting to cross without coordination would be confronted by the Revolutionary Guards.
In a video interview Tuesday, Ghalibaf said: “The Americans falsely assure ships that they can pass through the Strait, but those ships come under attack.”
Iranian military-linked outlets have also reported attacks or threats against vessels Tehran considers noncompliant. The IRGC said one supertanker caught fire after striking two naval mines, but CENTCOM rejected that account and said no vessel had struck mines in the Strait.
Fars separately reported that a Saudi tanker, Cedar, had stopped while transiting the southern corridor of the Strait, but did not establish that Iranian forces had detained the vessel.
The maritime confrontation widened further Tuesday when the US military struck two Iranian government tankers. Axios reported that the attack was carried out under a new “tanker for tanker” policy approved by Trump in response to Iranian attacks on shipping.
US officials said the two tankers were anchored off Iran’s coast north of the US naval blockade line when drones launched missiles into their engine rooms. Axios said it was the first time the US military had struck Iranian tankers in retaliation for attacks on shipping rather than to enforce the blockade.
The escalation leaves the debate inside Iran no longer centered solely on how to answer individual US attacks. Increasingly, the argument is over whether Tehran should try to anticipate them — and whether doing so would strengthen deterrence or instead accelerate an already widening regional war.
