Trump vows 'retaliation' after first US-Iran strikes in a month

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A tanker has reported being struck by three projectiles while sailing out of the Strait of Hormuz, 17 nautical miles east of Oman's Khasab, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) said on Tuesday.

No casualties or environmental impact have been reported, UKMTO said.

Donald Trump and his senior aides are considering resuming the war on Iran to prevent it from attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, three US officials toldAxios.

The plan, reportedly drawn up US Central Command (CENTCOM) and backed  by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, would stop short of full-scale war in favour of limited strikes targeting Iranian missile and radar sites, they said.

One official described the floated operation as "mowing the lawn", a popular term among Israeli military officials to describe the periodic bombing of Gaza.

"The President retains all options at his disposal. The Iranians want to make a deal, but they are always a day late and a dollar short," a White House official told the news outlet.

A Saudi oil tanker was stopped while transiting through the southern corridor of the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian media reported on Tuesday.

There was no immediate Saudi confirmation.

Earlier, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said it received a report of an incident involving a tanker and military forces in the Indian Ocean on Monday, without providing further details.

Clashes with local armed groups in Syria's Druze-majority province of Sweida left four government security personnel wounded on Monday, state media reported.

The violence came a day after two civilians were killed in similar clashes west of Sweida city, according to two local security sources.

Syrian state television said that four members of the Internal Security Forces suffered injuries "while confronting attacks by outlaw groups in the western countryside of Sweida" on Monday night.

The groups, it said, had attempted to "attack security posts in the vicinity of the villages of al-Mansoura, Walgha and Tal Hadid".

Sweida city and other parts of the southern province are under the control of local armed groups and constitute the last areas outside the control of Syria's new authorities, who are seeking to extend their authority across the entire country after toppling longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in 2024.

Among those groups is the so-called National Guard, which is affiliated with Druze Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri.

Israeli settlers raided the Palestinian village of Burqa in the centre of the occupied West Bank earlier this evening.

Burqa mayor Sayel Kanaan told Palestinian news agency WAFA Wafa that settlers broke into a home on the outskirts of the village and beat a woman and child inside.

The extremists also tried to torch a tractor, a vehicle scrapyard and a sheep pen, the mayor said.

Denmark reopened its embassy in Damascus on Monday after a years-long suspension of diplomatic activities that began after Syria's civil war erupted, state media reported.

SANA said that Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, accompanied by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, reopened the outpost "after a 14-year-long break".

"A new chapter is being written in Syrian-Danish relations, and this step encourages the rest of the European countries to invest in Syria and follow suit," Shaibani said, according to SANA.

Several European countries shut their embassies and cut diplomatic ties with longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad after his government brutally repressed pro-democracy protests in 2011, triggering nearly 14 years of civil war.

President Donald Trump was sending a message to Iran with his social media post about Iran's energy hub of Kharg Island being blown to smithereens, Vice President JD Vance said on Monday.

"The president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit. He would be the first to say he doesn't make announcements about military actions on social media, but I think that he's sending a message to the Iranians," Vance said when asked about Trump's post.

Trump's one-line social media post on Sunday was accompanied by an AI-generated video clip. A US official said on Monday the military had not targeted Kharg Island in overnight strikes.

An Iranian official dismissed Trump's post as "laughable".

The death toll from the US attack on Iran’s Larak Island has risen to three, Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency has reported.

Israeli airstrikes killed five people around Gaza City on Monday, a local hospital and rescuers said.

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said on Monday morning that it had received two bodies "following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the entrance of a residential building near the municipal park in Gaza City".

Later in the day, the hospital said it received three additional bodies and several wounded "as a result of an Israeli drone strike that targeted a civilian car in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, southwest of Gaza City".

The civil defence confirmed to AFP the toll of the two strikes.

Images shared by the civil defence showed workers inspecting the car targeted in the second strike, completely destroyed and reduced to a blackened shell of warped metal, as a crowd of bystanders gathered around it.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan agreed to establish a secretariat in Saudi Arabia under their nascent defensive alliance, the three countries said following talks on Monday.

Representatives of the three countries met in Istanbul for the first time since agreeing to form the Mecca defence pact earlier this month.

The secretariat will be led by a Pakistani official for three years, the statement said.

The countries will work to strengthen their collective defence capabilities and cohesion of their armed forces, it added.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression and stipulates that an armed attack against any of the three would be regarded as an attack on all.

Ten Iranian fishermen who went missing in Gulf waters weeks ago are alive in the United Arab Emirates and set to travel home soon, Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday.

Mohammad Soleimani, head of the ministry's representative office in Hormozgan province, said 13 fishermen had been missing since early August, amid concerns they may have been arrested after entering the territorial waters of neighbouring countries.

"Today, the UAE informed our embassy in Abu Dhabi that 10 of these fishermen are in the country and can leave from there," Soleimani said, according to the Iranian state broadcaster.

"Given that these individuals did not have their passports with them, the embassy of our country issued them travel documents, and they will return to Hormozgan on the first flight this week," he added.

There was no immediate response from the UAE on the report, and Soleimani added that "there is still no information about the other three missing fishermen".

Turkey's top diplomat stressed Monday the regional defence pact with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia was not aimed at any particular country and open to others, including Egypt.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan's remarks came after the first ministerial meeting of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement which commits Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to mutual defence in the event of any of them being attacked.

"This alliance is founded on international principles such as respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and non-interference in their internal affairs," he told reporters in Istanbul after they met in an Ottoman-era palace.

"The alliance is not against any state and is open to all states in our region that adhere to these fundamental principles," he said of a pact inked against a backdrop of war between the US and Iran, and regional attacks by Israel and the Tehran-backed Houthi rebels.

It unites NATO's second-largest army, Turkey, with the Islamic world's only nuclear-armed state, Pakistan, and the leading Gulf power in Saudi Arabia.

Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem under protection of Israeli security forces on Monday evening.

Palestinian news agency WAFA said the extremist politician performed Talmudic prayers in the mosque’s courtyards.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent vowed Monday to persist with economic pressure on Iran, saying a turning point could be near as G20 finance leaders opened talks clouded by war and trade tensions.

"We are going to continue exerting pressure, and we've had very good discussions here already," Bessent told reporters before starting meetings with Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors.

He said a turning point in this US pressure campaign could come "within weeks or months," adding that Iran's economy need not collapse in the Middle East war to achieve this.

President Donald Trump's administration is working to rally G20 partners to ramp up economic pressure on Iran during the talks in Asheville, North Carolina, through Tuesday - amid a renewed exchange of fire with Tehran.

Iraq's judiciary has sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for the kidnapping of American journalist Shelly Kittleson, who was abducted earlier this year by a powerful Iran-backed group, a judicial source said Monday.

At the height of the Middle East war, on 31 March, Kataeb Hezbollah kidnapped Kittleson in Baghdad, holding her for several days before setting her free just hours before the United States and Iran agreed to a ceasefire.

Iraqi authorities arrested one member of the group at the time.

Donald Trump threatened to hit Iran "hard" after the two foes traded fire for the first time in over a month.

"We're going to hit them hard," Trump said, according to a Fox News reporter who spoke to him briefly. "There will be a response."

The United States said it attacked Iranian rocket launchers on the island of Larak to prevent Tehran planting mines in the key shipping lane.

Iran responded by with missile and drone attacks aimed at Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, saying they targeted US forces there, but President Masoud Pezeshkian later on Monday called for dialogue.

Three Palestinians were killed on Monday evening in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Palestinian news agency WAFA reports.

A medical source at Al-Shifa Hospital said that three bodies arrived at the hospital following the strike, which reportedly targeted a vehicle in the southern Tel Al-Hawa suburb.

Israeli authorities have established a new illegal settlement named "Noa" southeast of Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Several government ministers and Knesset members attended a ceremony to unveil the new settlement, which is close to other settlements which have been illegally built on Palestinian land.

Settlement construction has accelerated at its fastest pace in history under the current far-right Israeli government, which observers have warned is marching closer towards a de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Oil prices jumped more than two percent Monday, with the Brent international benchmark rising above $90 a barrel after a fresh flare-up in the US-Iran war.

The move came after the United States said it had attacked Iranian rocket launchers on a small island in the Strait of Hormuz, its first strikes on the country in a month.

The attack prompted Tehran to retaliate by hitting US military targets in Jordan.

President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States would hit back against Iranian attacks on US targets in the Middle East, according to Fox News.

The exchange came shortly after the US-Iran war hit the six-month mark, and at a time when hostilities had been subsiding.