Iran claims attack on American air base after U.S. military strikes, further clouding peace deal prospects

Iran said Thursday that it had targeted a U.S. air base in response to U.S. military attacks in the south of the country, Reuters reported, citing Iranian state media.

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The report in the semi-official Tasnim news agency did not say where the U.S. air base was. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in the report that the base was targeted at 4:50 a.m. local time (9:20 p.m. ET Wednesday) after a U.S. attack near the airport in Bandar Abbas, a port city near the Strait of Hormuz.

There was no immediate confirmation from the United States of an attack on one of its military bases.

The report of an Iranian attack on a U.S. base came as the Kuwaiti army said Thursday that its air defenses were responding to “hostile missile and drone threats” and that any sounds of explosions were the result of attacks being intercepted. It did not say where the attacks were coming from or what they were targeting.

It was not clear whether Iran’s claimed attack on a U.S. air base was related to the attack on Kuwait, which hosts a U.S. air base that Iran and its proxies have previously targeted in the 3-month-old war.

Earlier, a U.S. official said the U.S. military shot down four Iranian one-way attack drones and struck a ground control station inside Iran on Wednesday that the military assessed as presenting a direct threat to U.S. forces and commercial shipping. The strikes were near Bandar Abbas, the official said.

It was the second time in three days the U.S. has carried out what it describes as defensive strikes against Iran, adding further pressure as Washington and Tehran try to reach a deal to end the conflict amid a fragile ceasefire.

The U.S. official said Wednesday’s attacks were limited and do not represent a resumption of major combat operations against Iran.

The IRGC warned Thursday that any further U.S. attacks would bring a “more decisive” response and that Washington bears responsibility for the consequences.

The U.S. official described the strikes around Bandar Abbas as defensive because the drones presented a threat to U.S. forces near the Strait of Hormuz and to commercial shipping that was transiting the area. The ground control station was targeted because a fifth drone was about to launch from there, the official said.

The drones, which the official said belonged to the IRGC, did not hit any military or civilian targets.

Iranian state TV reported on Telegram that three explosions were heard east of Bandar Abbas at 1:30 a.m. local time (6 p.m. ET), which triggered air defenses in the city for a few minutes. The cause and exact location of the explosions were being investigated, state TV said in the post.

At a Cabinet meeting earlier Wednesday, President Donald Trump said no one is going to be allowed to control the Strait of Hormuz, the key waterway through which some 20% of the world’s oil flowed before the war.

“The strait is going to be open to everybody,” he said, adding, “Nobody is going to control it.”

Late Wednesday, the Trump administration said it was imposing sanctions on a new agency Iran announced this month, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which aims to approve the transiting of ships through the strait and charge them tolls as high as $2 million each.

“The Iranian military’s latest attempt to extort global maritime trade is proof that Economic Fury has left the regime desperate for cash,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement, referring to a U.S. economic pressure campaign against Iran.

Iranian state TV reported Wednesday that the U.S. had promised to withdraw its forces from areas surrounding Iran and lift its naval blockade in the strait in exchange for Tehran’s restoring the number of ships passing through the waterway to prewar levels within a month.

But the White House on Wednesday vigorously rejected what Iranian state media had called a preliminary “unofficial” memorandum-of-understanding framework with the U.S., with Trump saying Iran was “negotiating on fumes.”

“They want very much to make a deal,” he said at the Cabinet meeting. “So far, they haven’t gotten there. We’re not satisfied with it, but we will be — either that or we’ll have to just finish the job.”