By Yomna Ehab
DUBAI, June 1 (Reuters) – The U.S. said it struck Iranian military sites at the weekend and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Monday it had targeted a U.S. base in response, the latest exchange of attacks amid negotiations to end the three-month-old war.
The U.S. and Iran have sporadically exchanged strikes since their ceasefire took effect in early April as diplomacy aimed at a more durable agreement drags on. A similar exchange occurred last Thursday and was described in near-identical terms by both sides.
The weekend U.S. strikes on Iran’s Gulf coast were in response to “aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters,” the U.S. Central Command said in a post on X.
“U.S. fighter aircraft swiftly responded by eliminating Iranian air defences, a ground control station, and two one-way attack drones that posed clear threats to ships transiting regional waters,” CENTCOM said, adding it will continue to protect U.S. assets and interests during the ongoing ceasefire.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Monday it had targeted an air base used by the U.S. in response to the attack on southern Iran, without identifying which base.
Air defences in Kuwait, where a major U.S. base is located, were intercepting missile and drone attacks on Monday as sirens sounded across the country, the state news agency KUNA reported, without providing further details.
The war launched by the U.S. and Israel on February 28 has killed thousands of people, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, and caused global economic pain by pushing up energy prices due to Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
STOP NEGATIVE ‘CHIRPING’, TRUMP SAYS
In a late night social media post, U.S. President Donald Trump did not mention the exchange of hostilities, repeating his as-yet unproven claim that Iran “really wants to make a deal”.
He berated critics, including what he described as “seemingly unpatriotic Republicans”, for negative “chirping” about negotiations to end the conflict.
“Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end – It always does!” he said.
Trump is under pressure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get U.S. gasoline prices down ahead of the November congressional elections, as voters show increasing frustration over rising prices. At the same time, he faces a potential backlash from Iran hawks in his own party over any concessions to Tehran.
Oil prices rose about 2% in Asia on Monday as the lack of progress in negotiations kept traders on edge.
Trump has said his key aim in the war is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon with its highly enriched uranium. Tehran has consistently denied it has plans to do that.
The two sides remain at odds on several other issues, such as Tehran’s demands for the lifting of sanctions and the release of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in foreign banks.
Israel’s war in Lebanon with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia is another major impediment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he had ordered troops to move further into Lebanon in the battle against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with both Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Netanyahu on the diplomatic negotiations between Israel and Lebanon and has proposed a plan to allow for “gradual de-escalation,” a U.S. official said.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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