US carried out 'limited' strikes on Iranian island, US media say

The United States carried out limited strikes on the island of Qeshm, in the Strait of Hormuz, several American media reported on Tuesday, November 3. According to the Wall Street Journal, which revealed them, these strikes were carried out on Monday, on the eve of the mid-term elections in the United States. The official Iranian news agency IRNA earlier reported five explosions heard on the island, and reported that residents had seen two planes in the sky.

Anonymous US officials cited by the WSJ and several other media outlets said they were the latest in a series of "limited" and "defensive" strikes carried out in recent weeks. According to these sources, they were not announced publicly to avoid giving the impression that Washington intended to resume large-scale combat operations. The American military command for the Middle East (Centcom) did not immediately respond. The Israeli army told AFP on Tuesday that it was not involved in these strikes.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on Tuesday that Tehran reserved the right to defend itself, after American media reported American strikes the day before against the Iranian island of Qeshm, in the Strait of Hormuz. “The Islamic Republic of Iran retains the right to legitimate self-defense until the military aggression has been completely and definitively interrupted,” Kazem Gharibabadi told journalists who questioned him about these strikes, without explicitly confirming that they had been carried out, according to the Iranian news agency Isna.

Donald Trump assured Monday evening on his Truth Social platform that an agreement with Iran "could happen", while his camp suffers from Americans' dissatisfaction with the rising cost of living and the war. “Oil prices are falling like stones (...) because people feel that there will be no war with Iran,” he said. “We still have to take care of, I would say, one or two [nuclear] sites, but we can do that in ten minutes,” the President of the United States declared on Saturday from his residence in Florida.

The Trump administration is therefore blowing hot and cold with Tehran. It threatens to resume military operations, while displaying its confidence in the diplomatic process. “The ball is now in the court of the United States to avoid war,” declared Iranian chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf during a speech to the parliament, which he chairs. The head of Iranian diplomacy, Abbas Araghchi, described these discussions as "very intense" to end the conflict triggered at the end of February by Israeli-American strikes on Tehran.

Iran conditions the reopening of the strait on a ceasefire on all fronts in the region, the unfreezing of its assets held abroad, the lifting of sanctions hitting its oil sector as well as the end of the American naval blockade.