The United States said Monday that it bombed radar and drone sites in Iran after Tehran shot down one of its drones over the weekend, and Iran then said it launched a strike of its own, in the latest exchange of fire rattling the already fragile truce.
The US military’s Central Command said it carried out the strikes in Iran on Saturday and Sunday around the city of Geruk and on Qeshm Island.
“The measured and deliberate strikes occurred ... in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a US MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters,” Central Command said.
“US 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.”
Kuwait said its air defences opened fire early Monday morning to intercept incoming drones and missiles.
"The General Staff of the Army wishes to advise that any sounds of explosions heard are the result of air defense systems intercepting these hostile attacks," the Kuwait Army said in a post on its official X account.
Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry later condemned “heinous and repeated Iranian attacks”.
Around the same time, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it responded to an American attack without saying where, likely referring to the attack on Kuwait.
In a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, the IRGC said that US forces had targeted a telecommunications tower.
Kuwait is home to US Army Central, its forward command in the Middle East. While the US Air Force no longer flies the MQ-1 Predator, the US Army still does.
Iranian state television later shared footage of the ballistic missile launch, including a close-up showing a sticker on its body depicting a bruised US President Donald Trump overlaid on a "closed" Strait of Hormuz with the caption: “Until the last American soldier leaves the region.”
This is not the first time during the truce that Tehran has targeted Kuwait. Last Thursday, Kuwaiti media reported sirens in the country during the early hours of the morning, after the IRGC claimed it had targeted a US airbase in a missile strike without disclosing its location.
Kuwait also came under repeated fire from Iran during the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on Tehran on 28 February.
On 1 March, an Iranian drone struck a US tactical operations centre at Port Shuaiba, killing six American soldiers and wounding more than 30. Iranian drones also caused significant damage to a government building in Kuwait City on 5 April.
Kuwait's commercial aviation has been suspended since the start of the war.
US forces have also conducted further strikes on Iran in recent days. Last Thursday, US CENTCOM said it had targeted four Iranian drones described as a threat to the strait and destroyed a drone control station in Bandar Abbas that was attempting to launch a fifth.
Over the weekend, the US fired a missile into the engine room of a Gambia-flagged cargo ship trying to break its blockade of Iranian ports.
A trickle of ships has made it out of the strait through which a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas once passed, but pressure continues on global energy supplies.
Peace deal remains uncertain
After meeting his advisers on Friday, Trump has yet to decide whether to move ahead with a deal — which Tehran has said is still not finalised — to extend the ceasefire and reopen the strait.
Aside from reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, Trump has said his priorities include stopping Iran from developing any nuclear weapon.
Iran has insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful, though it has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so.
Tehran has said it needs the release of $12 billion in frozen assets before engaging in substantive talks on the programme, dismissing earlier Trump comments that its enriched uranium stockpile would be destroyed as "baseless", according to Iranian state-run media.
US Vice President JD Vance suggested last week that negotiators are trying to strike general terms on Iran’s nuclear stockpile, with the specifics to be hammered out in the ensuing talks.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei on Monday again accused the US of “constantly” changing its positions.
“From the beginning, we knew — and we continue to know — that we are negotiating in an atmosphere of mistrust," Baghaei told journalists.
Iran's chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf also expressed his reservations, saying that Tehran "will not approve any agreement until we are certain that the rights of the Iranian people have been upheld," in a video statement broadcast on state-run television.
Trump expressed optimism about the talks in a post on his Truth Social platform early Monday in Washington.
“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the USA and those that are with us,” he wrote. “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end — it always does."
