Hegseth: US to hit Iran again tonight
Shafaq News- Washington
US War Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the United States would launch new strikes on Iran, declaring that US Central Command would be "busy tonight" after President Donald Trump vowed to hit Tehran "hard" unless it agreed to a deal with Washington.
Speaking at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, Hegseth noted, "President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be."
Trump also convened his national security team to discuss the next phase of the US response. According to two US sources cited by Axios, one option under consideration is a military operation that would be “big in scale but short in duration,” aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran “to change its position in the negotiations.”
Meanwhile, Thomas Warrick, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy, told Shafaq News that Trump now appears convinced military pressure offers the best chance of securing an agreement with Iran.
“President Trump thought that after the airstrike on military targets following the downing of the US Apache helicopter, that should be the end of it. Instead, Iran launched 21 drone or missile strikes at a number of Gulf Arab countries, showing their willingness to escalate rather than de-escalate,” he added.
On Tuesday, US forces struck radar and air-defense sites in southern Iran after Washington accused Tehran of involvement in the downing of a US Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz, an allegation Iran denied. Tehran later announced a drone attack targeting the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain through its Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.
Washington and Tehran have been negotiating an end to the conflict that erupted on Feb. 28 following US and Israeli strikes on Iran and subsequent Iranian attacks on US and Israeli-linked targets across the Gulf. One of the main sticking points remains Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium, which Trump insists must be addressed to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Mohsen Rezaei, an adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said on June 5 that progress depends on the release of $24 billion in Iranian assets frozen under US sanctions. He also argued that unresolved provisions in the draft framework require further clarification and accused Washington of attempting to impose its own conditions while leaving Tehran's concerns unaddressed.
