Trump vows to hit Iran hard, says US escorting dozens of ships in Hormuz

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to hit Iran hard and claimed Washington was helping some 30 ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz every night.

Trump’s comments on Monday came after the US bombed Iran’s Larak Island and Tehran launched retaliatory strikes targeting US military bases and assets in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, marking the first exchange of fire in more than a month.

Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Trump claimed the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has blockaded since the start of the US-Israel war in February, was in “extremely good shape”.

“We’re taking over. Many, many ships got through last night. As you know, with the navy’s assistance, and we’ve been averaging 30 ships a night,” he said.

Earlier, he had promised to respond to Iran’s retaliatory strikes.

“We’re going to hit them hard,” he told Fox News. “There will be a response.”

For its part, Iran warned that any site used to launch US attacks on its territory would be targeted.

In a joint statement, the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said the US has continued to use the territory, airspace and facilities in regional countries to attack Iran despite previous warnings and assurances from some countries in the region.

They said Iran respects the sovereignty of neighbouring states but “will never tolerate aggression”.  They warned that any further attack would draw a “much heavier” response, adding that “the US has no choice but to leave the region”.

Regional countries

The US had struck Iran’s Larak Island, claiming it targeted launchers preparing to fire rockets carrying naval mines at the Strait of Hormuz. The attack came weeks after the Trump administration said it was shifting tactics from military operations to economic pressure, and the latest exchange showed that the risk of fighting remains high without an agreement to permanently end the war.

In a social media post on Monday, Trump said the US’s economic and military pressure on Iran has left the country in shambles.

“Iran is officially a Failed Nation,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country.”

He also suggested that Iran’s crackdown on antigovernment demonstrators is what is preventing the government from collapsing.

“The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of ‘BULL****,'” he wrote.

The figure of 100,000 protesters killed is the highest Trump has cited. He had previously said Iran killed as many as 60,000 people during demonstrations earlier this year. It is not clear how he arrived at the new number.

Iranian authorities have put the figure at 3,117, including members of the security forces, blaming the deaths on what it said were Israel-backed “rioters”.

Iran has meanwhile accused the US of committing war crimes and targeting civilians during the war. A strike on Minab, southern Iran, on the first day of the conflict hit a girls’ school, killing 168 people, mostly children.

Joey Hood, a former US ambassador to Tunisia and a former acting director of the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs, told Al Jazeera that regional countries will need to find a solution that allows both sides to step back from the conflict.

“It’s going to require countries of the region getting together and finding those creative solutions that would allow both sides to save face and back away from this conflict,” he said.

“You could imagine, for example, an Islamic naval coalition led by Pakistan and Turkiye that could monitor the strait and assure Iran that everything going through it is peaceful. That would allow Iran the ability to back off without saying that it gave up its rights to the strait,” he added.