A spokesman for Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) condemned the United States on Friday for conducting what U.S. Central Command referred to as “self-defense strikes” to protect American assets in the region, claiming that it had responded and caused “significant damage.”
Central Command (CENTCOM), the wing of the American armed forces responsible for operations in the Middle East, revealed on Thursday that it had “intercepted unprovoked Iranian attacks and responded with self-defense strikes,” destroying the Iranian assets used in the attack. CENTCOM described a flurry of “missiles, drones, and small boats approaching American naval assets and attacking, but failing to cause any damage.” The American attacks reportedly targeted Iranian ports as well as the projectiles targeting their ships.
President Donald Trump had announced a ceasefire in Operation Epic Fury, a Pentagon mission launched in February to degrade Iran’s ability to conduct and finance terrorism around the world. Joint American and Israeli operations have eliminated dozens of senior Iranian officials since February, including “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leaving the regime severely disjointed. President Trump has expressed frustration in the past month that negotiating with the Iranian regime is difficult because “nobody knows who’s in charge.” Negotiations are reportedly ongoing despite these challenges, however, and reports indicate that Tehran and Washington are going back and forth with proposals to finalize an end to the war.
Discussing U.S. strikes on Iranian assets on Thursday, President Trump rejected the idea that they violated the ceasefire or represented a resumption of hostilities.
“It’s just a love tap,” the president told ABC News, emphasizing that the “ceasefire is going, it’s in effect.”
The president had announced on his website, Truth Social, that American destroyers had navigated out of the Strait of Hormuz, but came under attack by Iran.
“There was no damage done to the three Destroyers, but great damage done to the Iranian attackers… These boats went to the bottom of the Sea, quickly and efficiently. Missiles were shot at our Destroyers, and were easily knocked down,” he claimed.
The president emphasized that Iran “is not a normal country” and is run “by LUNATICS.”
Trump also posted a meme on his website Truth Social showing what appeared to be a U.S. Navy vessel attacking an Iranian drone with the caption, “Lasers: Bing, Bing, GONE!!!”
The IRGC, the most belligerent terrorist arm of the Iranian government, issued a statement declaring that America had violated the ongoing ceasefire, but citing as the violation not the CENTCOM self-defense strikes but rather the ongoing American blockade of Iranian commerce in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s response to Operation Epic Fury has consisted mainly of two separate projects: one, extensive bombing of its Gulf neighbors such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, and the other, the blocking of commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. In response to Iran’s disruption of global trade, the United States imposed its own blockade on Iranian ship traffic in the Strait, which President Trump has stated is not subject to the ceasefire.
“The aggressive, terrorist, and marauding U.S. military violated the ceasefire by targeting an Iranian oil tanker sailing from Iran’s coastal waters in the Jask region toward the Strait of Hormuz, as well as another vessel entering the Strait of Hormuz off the UAE port of Fujairah,” Ebrahim Zolfaqari, a spokesman for the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, declared on Friday, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). CENTCOM confirmed on Friday it had disabled two Iran-flagged vessels as part of the Strait of Hormuz blockade.
Zolfaqari also claimed that the United States attacked “civilian areas,” presumably referring to the CENTCOM port strikes, but claimed that “some regional countries” were also involved. Some reports on Thursday indicated that the UAE had organized its own self-defense operations after days of Iranian attempted strikes on its oil facilities.
“The criminal and aggressor U.S. and the countries supporting it must know that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as in the past, will respond powerfully and without the slightest hesitation to any act of aggression or attack,” Zolfaqari declared.
The IRGC separately claimed that it had continued to attack American military assets on Friday and, contrary to Pentagon statements, had caused material harm to the Navy.
“According to the IRGC Navy, intelligence monitoring shows that the U.S. military sustained significant damage, leading three enemy ships to hastily flee the Strait of Hormuz,” IRNA reported. The U.S. military has not offered any such update at press time.
While the IRGC has escalated its threats, diplomacy reported continues. Speaking to reporters from Rome on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio updated that Iran is currently reviewing a peace proposal from Washington and that his agency expects a response to it on Friday.
“We’ll see what the response entails. The hope is it’s something that can put us into a serious process of negotiation,” Rubio offered.
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