US Central Command launched airstrikes against Iran on Friday, June 26, hitting four targets in response to an Iranian drone attack a day earlier on a commercial cargo ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz — the first American strikes on Iran since the two countries agreed last week to extend a fragile ceasefire. CENTCOM said six land-based aircraft struck Iranian missile and drone storage facilities and coastal radar sites, calling the operation a 'powerful response' to what it described as a clear violation of the truce.
The targets, according to US officials, were concentrated along the strait near the Iranian coastal town of Sirik and on Qeshm Island, an Iranian island commanding the narrow waterway. 'The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,' CENTCOM said in its statement. No US aircraft were lost and the strikes were completed without reported American casualties.
The exchange began on Thursday, June 25, when a drone operated by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged cargo vessel positioned off the coast of Oman. The drone hit the ship's bridge, causing damage but no casualties or environmental harm, and the vessel continued on its way. President Donald Trump said Iran had launched four drones at the ship, three of which were knocked down before one struck home, and called the attack a 'foolish violation' of the agreement.
Iran responded to the US strikes with attacks of its own on American military installations in the region, and the IRGC warned that any repeat would draw a sharper reply. 'In the event of repeated aggression, our response will be more extensive than this,' the force said. Vice President JD Vance framed Washington's posture bluntly: 'If they have disagreements, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence.'
The clash is the first armed confrontation since the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on June 17 that extended an already shaky ceasefire for at least 60 days. That accord, brokered with mediation from Qatar and Pakistan after talks at the Swiss resort of Bürgenstock, called for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a halt to hostilities across the region including in Lebanon, and a period in which Iran would allow commercial vessels to pass through the strait using its 'best efforts.'
But the agreement left critical details unresolved, and those gaps are now the friction points. Washington wants ships to use a southern route hugging the Omani coast; Tehran has insisted on a northern passage requiring its permission, and has not ruled out collecting tolls once the 60-day window expires. The dispute over who controls passage through the strait — and on what terms — has turned each transit into a potential trigger.
The strait is among the most strategically sensitive stretches of water on earth. Roughly a fifth of global oil supply moves through it, and Iran's repeated threats to close it have long been its most potent form of leverage. Earlier in the standoff, Trump warned Tehran directly: 'You close it and you won't have a country.' For now the waterway remains open, and in the days after the June 17 deal daily tanker transits surged while oil prices slid back toward levels last seen before the war.
Markets, notably, did not panic at the renewed strikes. Crude prices continued to fall on Friday as tankers kept moving through the strait, a sign that traders are betting the ceasefire framework will hold despite the exchange of fire. That calm, however, rests on an assumption that could be tested quickly if Iran's promised 'more extensive' retaliation materializes or if another commercial ship is hit.
The coming days will show whether the strikes were a one-off enforcement action — a message that violations carry a cost — or the first crack in a truce that has held, barely, for less than two weeks. With both sides claiming the other broke the deal, and with the mechanics of reopening the strait still unsettled, the 60-day countdown that was meant to wind the conflict down now doubles as a measure of how long the peace can last.