Trump Reveals Details of High-stakes Phone Call after Striking Iran with Dozens of Tomahawk Missiles as Tehran Makes Desperate Plea for Attacks to Stop
By MELISSA KOENIG, US REPORTER
President Donald Trump has claimed Iranian officials called him directly after the United States launched a new round of ‘self-defense’ strikes on the country Wednesday.
He claimed to Fox News that the top officials in Tehran begged him to halt the US bombing attacks, which began at 5.15pm ET.
US Central Command said the strikes came at the ‘Commander-in-Chief’s direction’ and were ‘in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression.’
The ‘precision munitions’ struck ‘military surveillance capabilities, communication systems, and air defense sites,’ CENTCOM said.
More strikes may also be forthcoming, President Donald Trump warned.
‘We will bomb the Iranians again tomorrow night if they refuse to sign the proposed deal,’ he told Fox, adding that the bombing would stop soon but if Tehran did not sign a peace deal ‘we’ll bomb the s**t out of them.’
Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the stalled efforts to negotiate a peace deal and was hoping the bombing efforts would push Iran to strike a deal.
He even told his aides after approving the strikes on Tuesday to deliver a message to Tehran via the mediators in Qatar, that the attacks were in response to Iranian forces downing an Apache helicopter with two crew members on board – and were not meant to be the start of another all-out war.
Yet, he said, military pressure would only increase until Iran ceded to his demands.
The strikes on Wednesday came at President Donald Trump’s direction
The attack on Iran was described as ‘self-defense strikes’ after Iran struck US assets
Iranian missiles are pictured being launched earlier in the day
The US fired nearly 50 Tomahawk missiles at the country on Wednesday night.
Iranian state media has reported that explosions were heard around Minab and Sirik in the southern part of the country, near the Strait of Hormuz.
Air defense systems in Asaluyah were also activated – though no attacks have occurred thus far in the key energy hub that houses refineries and petrochemical complexes, CNN reports.
As the strikes then continued, Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya military command headquarters warned that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed to all marine traffic – and all ships seen passing through the waterway through would be struck down.
‘Following the continued provocations of the criminal United States and in light of the beginning of attacks by that country’s invading military against certain areas in southern Hormozgan Province, the Strait of Hormuz is, from this moment, declared closed to all vessels, including oil tankers and commercial ships, due to insecurity in the region, and any transit will be targeted,’ the military command said in a statement.
Two ‘non-compliant’ oil tankers have already been struck down in accordance with the closure, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy claimed on social media.
US Central Command, however, has disputed the claims that the strait is closed.
‘Commercial ships are continuing to transit in and out of the Strait of Hormuz tonight,’ it posted on social media.
An Iranian missile was launched as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it had carried out attacks on a US base in Jordan and 21 other targets across the Gulf
The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply traverses, has become a major sticking point in the negotiations with Iran.
Trump has said a US naval blockade has halted Iranian business and prevented it from paying military wages, while still allowing other countries to export ‘lots of oil.’
He also claimed that because many of Iran’s radars have been destroyed, officials there could not detect the vessels as they transit the waterway.
And in a post on social media, Trump said a ‘secret mission’ has ‘resulted in more than 100 million barrels of oil’ making its way through the Strait and ‘into the open market.’
Original source: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15890359/US-attacks-Iran-self-defense-strikes-Trump.html