Tankers attacked as Trump mulls further strikes in “little war” with Iran

Iran’s president insisted on Tuesday that his country would return to the commitments agreed to in the memorandum of understanding if the United States did so too.

“Unlike the US, my country has a brilliant record of fulfilling its international commitments and treaties and has always acted in accordance with the principles governing international law,” Masoud Pezeshkian said in a post on Telegram.

The Iranian president has in recent weeks called for a return to the terms agreed to in the memorandum of understanding signed in June, which calls for a 60-day negotiation period.

Oil prices rose and U.S. stocks fell on Monday after American forces struck Iranian rocket launchers near the Strait of Hormuz, marking the first military action between the two countries in a month.

The global benchmark for crude oil, Brent, rose 2.7%, ending the day above $90 a barrel for November deliveries. Oil prices remain well below their level in April, when Brent spent much of the month over $100 a barrel, but are elevated from early August, when they fell below $80.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 374 points, or 0.7%, and the Nasdaq slipped 0.1%. Still, all three indexes closed with gains for the month of August.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.75%, around the level seen two weeks ago when the Trump administration took the unusual step of announcing it would intervene in the bond market.

— CBS/AP

President Trump called the Iran conflict “a relatively little war” for the U.S. as he weighed additional strikes on the country.

CBS News’ Weijia Jiang asked Mr. Trump in the Oval Office about a Washington Post report that several U.S. military leaders are concerned about a prolonged operation in the Middle East weakening Washington’s ability to confront threats elsewhere.

Mr. Trump disputed the concerns. “This is a relatively little war for us. This is not a big war,” the president said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is considering carrying out new strikes on Iran following hostilities over the weekend.

“They’re a failed nation,” Mr. Trump said of Iran. He later added, “That doesn’t mean we won’t smack them. We’ll see what happens.”

Family members of U.S. soldiers in one Army division who were deployed to the Middle East earlier this year have been told the deployments will last into 2027, according to a letter obtained by CBS News that was confirmed by two U.S. officials.

The Sunday-dated letter from the leaders of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, said that the deployments are expected to last a total of up to 12 months.

“We do not share that lightly, and we understand that a longer tour weighs heavily on every household, including our own,” division leaders Maj. Gen. Brandon Tegtmeier and Command Sgt. Maj. James Bradshaw said in the letter.

Iranian courts have issued death sentences for two women charged over anti-government protests in January, rights groups said Monday, as Tehran ramps up executions of people arrested in the demonstrations.

The two women were sentenced in separate cases but both were related to incidents in the central city of Isfahan, which was a hub of the nationwide protest activity that peaked on the nights of Jan. 8 and 9.

Against the backdrop of the war, Iran has already executed 29 men on charges related to the demonstrations, according to the Norway-based nongovernmental organization Iran Human Rights.

So far, no woman has been executed over the unrest, although Iran has hanged at least 16 women this year on other charges, according to Iran Human Rights.

Taraneh Rahimi, 20, was sentenced to death along with nine men over incidents during the protests in a square in Isfahan that saw two people killed, including a member of the security forces, the Norway-based Hengaw group and U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said Monday.

Other defendants in the case were given sentences of up to 36 years in prison, including Taraneh’s sister Romina, they added.

“Defendants’ lawyers did not have access to a substantial portion of the case file and objected that they had not been given sufficient time to review the documents and evidence,” Human Rights Activists News Agency said.

In the other case, Leila Abolhasani, a 43-year-old mother of two teenagers, was convicted by a court in Isfahan of setting fire to a store during the protests, the Dadban legal affairs monitor and Human Rights Activists News Agency said.

Her relatives have denied the accusation, saying she was only present at the scene and was filming the burning store, the groups said.

President Trump on Friday said a U.S. deal with Venezuela to tap its oil reserves “will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future.” With the average U.S. gas price still above $4 a gallon nationwide, American consumers may be wondering if help is on the way.

Don’t hold your breath, energy experts said.

Read more here.

President Trump is expected to meet with a group of oil refiners and distributors Tuesday as gas prices remain above $4 a gallon.

A White House official told CBS News the meeting will include a mix of small, medium and large refiners and distributors as well as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

“The President will meet with industry leaders to collaborate on the best ways to increase refining capacity, further unleash American energy dominance across the entire supply chain, and bring down prices for the American people.” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement.

The meeting comes after the U.S. struck a deal with Venezuela last week for control of about 65 billion barrels of oil, but experts told CBS News the deal isn’t likely to bring down gas prices anytime soon.

According to AAA, a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. cost an average of $4.08 as of Monday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration’s new economic pressure campaign aims to drive Iran back to the negotiating table.

“The goal here is to create the conditions that they will want to come to the table,” Bessent told CNBC on the sidelines of a meeting in North Carolina with finance ministers from the 20 largest economies in the world. “And the president’s been very clear: They have to give up their nuclear program, they have to turn over the highly enriched uranium, and they have to stop their support of proxies, and the strait has to be open.”

When he was told that increased economic hardship on people in Iran might not influence the regime, Bessent said, “My experience with people like this, the main thing they care about is their head staying attached to their neck.”

Vice President JD Vance said President Trump was sending a message to Iran when he posted an AI-generated video suggesting the U.S. had attacked Iran’s strategic Kharg Island.

“We know that they continue to shoot at commercial shipping,” Vance told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “We continue to have a lot of tools at our disposal to prevent them from doing so, or at least cut down on them from doing so, and that’s what the president is saying is, ‘Look, you guys are shooting at commercial shipping. You guys are behaving like a terrorist country. You’ve got to stop or there are going to be some consequences.'”

Mr. Trump shared the video on Sunday – a clip from the viewpoint of a helicopter as huge explosions around what looks like oil infrastructure are seen in the background. His only message with the video was: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!”

The government of Qatar issued a statement Monday condemning “renewed attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran targeting” Jordan with missiles and the United Arab Emirates with a drone.

Qatar’s foreign ministry called the Iranian attacks — which officials in Jordan and the UAE said were all intercepted — “a blatant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the two states, and a flagrant breach of international law, the Charter of the United Nations, and the principles of good neighborliness.”

Iran said it had targeted U.S. forces in the two Middle Eastern states in response to the first American attacks in weeks, which came Sunday as U.S. Central Command said Iranian rocket launchers and sea mines were destroyed in strikes on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials said the U.S. strikes killed two people and left several others wounded.

“The continuation of these attacks represents a dangerous escalation that would complicate efforts aimed at containing tensions and undermine political and diplomatic efforts seeking to achieve security and stability in the region,” Qatar’s foreign ministry said, adding a call for “an immediate and complete cessation of all military actions and attacks that threaten the security and stability of the region.”

President Trump said Monday that the U.S. would retaliate for Iran’s attacks on Sunday targeting Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, according to Fox News’ Trey Yingst, who quoted Mr. Trump as saying in a phone interview: “We’re going to hit them hard.”

“There will be a response,” Mr. Trump said, according to Yingst.

Iran fired missiles at Jordan and a drone at the UAE on Sunday, calling it retaliation for the first U.S. strikes in a month, which the American military said hit rocket launchers and sea drones Sunday on Iran’s Larak Island.

Iranian officials said two people were killed in the U.S. strikes. Authorities in Jordan and the UAE said all the Iranian weapons were intercepted or fell without causing damage.

The U.S. military’s Central Command dismissed on Monday a claim by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to have struck a supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz with sea mines, calling it “yet another IRGC attempt to intimidate regional commercial shipping through disinformation.”

The IRGC claimed overnight to have forced an unidentified tanker to turn around after trying to transit the strait without permission from Iranian authorities. 

“This is FALSE,” CENTCOM said in a brief statement shared on social media. “No ships have hit mines in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The Iranian claim was never corroborated by the U.K. navy’s Maritime Operations center, which monitors such attacks and is usually among the first reliable resources to report such attacks on ships. The most recent incident involving a commercial ship in the region reported by the UKMTO was a tanker “struck by an unknown projectile whilst transiting inbound in the Strait of Hormuz” on Saturday. 

While the Trump administration insists a southern route, close to Oman’s coastline, is safe and open for ships to transit the vital waterway, Tehran refuses to recognize the shipping lane and demands that all commercial vessels coordinate with Iranian authorities to use a northern passage, close to its own shores.

Despite U.S. assurances and American military escorts for some vessels, the number of daily transits of the strait remains at less than half the typical number that would have been seen before the war began.

The resumption of strikes by the U.S. and Iran over the weekend sent global oil prices rising again, meanwhile, with a barrel of international benchmark Brent crude selling for over $91 on Monday, up more than 3% compared to the previous day.

Iranian state media reported Monday that the U.S. attack on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz killed two people and wounded several others.

“During the attack on Larak Island late Sunday, two people were martyred and several others were injured. The injured in the incident are receiving medical services and their treatment is ongoing,” the official IRNA news agency said, quoting the governor of nearby Qeshm Island.

U.S. Central Command announced Sunday that it had carried out strikes against what it said were Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island, and sea mines set to be deployed.

CBS/AP

President Trump, in a Monday morning post on his Truth Social platform, dismissed Iran as a “failed nation” and “dead,” renewing his claim that the Islamic Republic regime is in “total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country,” more than six months into the war that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes.

“Iran is officially a Failed Nation. 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,” said the president. “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!)”

Mr. Trump and the Iranian regime have exchanged near daily insults via social media, while the conflict itself had largely paused in a stalemate over control of the Strait of Hormuz. 

The standoff, which Mr. Trump vowed last week to end by imposing further economic sanctions on Iran and its trade partners, turned openly violent again over the weekend, with U.S. strikes on Iran’s Larak Island in the strait, and Iran responding with attacks targeting Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

Oil prices surged more than 3% after U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on the Strait of Hormuz, prompting retaliation from Tehran which launched attacks targeting American allies in the region.

Brent crude, the international standard for the price of oil, jumped 3.8% to $91.40 per barrel early Monday. U.S. benchmark crude was also trading 3.8% higher at $86.58 per barrel.

Escalations in the conflict between Iran and the U.S. typically cause the price of oil to spike. The price of Brent crude has soared well over the $100 per barrel mark several times since the war started in February.

CBS/AP

Iranian authorities have seized a bulk carrier they accuse of dumping oil and sludge into the Strait of Hormuz, state media reported Monday.

“Following the publication of images of the discharge of oil into the sea … expert and clean-up teams were dispatched to the site and seized the ship causing the pollution,” the deputy head of the Ports and Maritime Department of the southern Hormozgan province, Esmaeil Makizadeh, told Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

“The seized ship was a bulk carrier carrying sugar and had dumped a mixture of burnt oil, bilge water and industrial sludge directly into the sea,” he said, without specifying the vessel’s flag or the nationalities of its crew.

He said the waste had since been cleaned from the water and the seized ship referred to Iran’s judiciary.

CBS/AFP

The European Union said Monday it would continue to maintain pressure on Iran by working with the United States and other G7 partners.

In a statement issued by the European Commission, the EU said it believed diplomatic efforts were needed to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but that it remained ready to expand sanctions and other measures to heap economic pressure on Iran.

“The EU welcomes efforts at ensuring that Iran ceases its destabilizing activities and engages in peace negotiations with good faith, also through additional economic pressure, including through the U.S.-led Operation Economic Outcast,” the statement said.

On Aug. 19, the Financial Times newspaper reported that Iranian forces had assessed striking U.S. assets in Europe if President Trump escalated the war. If they do, the hypothetical attack would be a major expansion of the conflict into NATO territory.

Iran’s foreign minister on Monday claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had tricked the U.S. into jointly launching the war with Iran.

“In Hebrew, Netanyahu openly crows that he suckered the U.S. administration into a war on Iran on behalf of Israel,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi claimed in a social media post. 

“Netanyahu explicitly laughs about how he ‘influenced’ America through 1,000 hours of airtime on U.S. networks,” he said.

The Trump administration has pushed back for months against the narrative that Israel led the U.S. into the war, while offering varying reasons for launching the attacks since the conflict began.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said just a few days into the war that the Trump administration had decided to join in the attack because Israel was planning to strike Iran, and “we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.” For that reason, Rubio said, the U.S. chose to strike Iran “preemptively” to take out many of its missiles. 

CBS/AFP

The United Arab Emirates condemned Iran on Monday for launching an attack on the country, which Iran’s military called retaliation for U.S. strikes on an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz.

The “aggressive attacks” by Iran represent “a dangerous escalation, an unacceptable assault, and direct threat to the country’s security, stability, and territorial integrity,” the UAE foreign ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said the UAE’s military had intercepted a drone launched by Iran over territorial waters.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday that the Islamic Republic will not hesitate to “respond decisively” to attacks, after the U.S. said it had carried out strikes on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

“The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will have no hesitation in exercising their inherent right to self-defense and will respond decisively, as appropriate, to any military aggression by the enemy,” the ministry said in a statement.

It also warned that other countries that assist the U.S. military in its attacks bear “responsibility for the consequences.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed to have targeted U.S. forces in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in retaliation for the American strikes on Larak Island.

President Trump shared an AI-generated video on his Truth Social platform late Sunday depicting what he said was Iran’s strategic oil hub of Kharg Island under attack.

“Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!” Mr. Trump wrote in his post accompanying the video.

It appeared to be a threat to the Iranian island, as there has been no evidence of any recent attack on the territory in the far northern Persian Gulf, which has long been Iran’s primary oil export terminal.

Earlier, the U.S. military struck Iran’s Larak Island, which sits very close to Iran’s coastline in the Strait of Hormuz.

The CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company said Monday that operations on Kharg Island had not stopped, according to Iran’s government-affiliated Nour News agency, which was cited by Reuters.

A supertanker was struck by two naval mines while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, sparking a fire and forcing it to stop, according to a statement by the Iranian military quoted by the Reuters news agency.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said the tanker had attempted to pass through the strategic waterway illegally, but it did not identify the ship or provide information about its location or crew.

The most recent incident involving a commercial ship in the region reported by the U.K. Navy’s Maritime Operations center, which monitors such attacks, was a tanker “struck by an unknown projectile whilst transiting inbound in the Strait of Hormuz” on Saturday. 

UKMTO said there were no casualties and no environmental impact reported.

The Jordanian Armed Forces said Sunday it intercepted eight missiles that had entered the country’s airspace, according to Jordan’s Al-Mamlaka TV broadcaster.  

A spokesperson for the military said all eight missiles were destroyed before they could do any damage, according to the broadcaster.

A person familiar with the attack also confirmed to CBS News the missiles were intercepted, although they did not specify how many.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Sunday it launched attacks on American military bases in Jordan in response to the U.S.’s earlier attack on Larak Island.

The IRGC said it launched ballistic missiles at King Hussein and Al-Azraq air bases and claimed it destroyed “technical and maintenance infrastructure and the enemy’s fighter jets’ deployment sites.” 

Separately, the IRGC said it targeted U.S. military personnel on an air base in the United Arab Emirates, and that it shot down a U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. forces on Sunday struck two rocket launchers on Iran’s Larak Island, in the Strait of Hormuz, according to U.S. Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins. 

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets and deploy sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz, Hawkins said. CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said Friday that U.S. forces had cleared all sea mines from the shipping lanes of the strait.

Larak Island sits in the Strait of Hormuz, just a few miles off Iran’s coast, and Tehran is believed to have used the island as a de facto toll booth as it demands ships pay fees to transit the strategic waterway safely.

The IRGC, in a statement conveyed by Iran’s state broadcaster, said “several of our fighters and compatriots” were killed and wounded in the U.S. strike, according to The Associated Press.

The statement said the attack would “result in punishment of the aggressor.”