US Launches Strikes on Iran After Apache Helicopter Downed in Strait of Hormuz

The United States has launched waves of attacks on Iran after the downing of a US Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting warnings of retaliation from Tehran.

The US military said the attacks began at 22:00 GMT on Tuesday and were a “proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”

Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB reported explosions on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz and in the ports of Sirik and Jask during the first wave.

It reported further explosions in Jask around 00:00 GMT on Wednesday and in Bandar Abbas at 01:00 GMT.

Earlier on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump blamed Iran for the downing of the helicopter.

In a statement on his Truth Social platform, he wrote that Iran had shot down the aircraft while it was on patrol over the strait and declared that the US “must, of necessity, respond to this attack”.

Both crew members wrestled rescued safely, he said.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said foreign military forces near Iranian territory were “at constant risk” and later promised that there would be a response to the new US strikes.

Iranian forces “will leave no attack or threat unanswered,” he wrote on X. “Leave our region if you want to be safe.”

Helicopter crew safe, uninjured

The downing of the helicopter and the strikes by the US military further strained a two-month ceasefire, a day after Iran and Israel exchanged fire for the first time since the fragile truce took effect.

Iranian state television said on Tuesday that the Israeli attacks killed at least two members of the country’s air-defence units.

The US-Israel war on Iran has shaken the global economy, driven up energy prices around the world and made many basics, including food, more expensive.

Progress in negotiations toward a permanent deal remains slow, however, particularly as Israel intensifies and expands its military campaign in Lebanon against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah armed group.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington, DC, said the US military believes the helicopter was brought down by an Iranian Shahed drone – a one-way attack drone – just off the coast of Oman.

In what the US military described as the first operation of its kind, an unmanned drone boat was dispatched to the scene, and both pilots were recovered within two hours.

Trump told US media that both service members “are safe and uninjured.”

US-Iran talks

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Tehran, said the US strikes raise the risk of a new escalation.

“We don’t know whether diplomacy will take precedence here, because there are proposals by the Americans being studied here in Iran,” he said.

“Iran has always been saying that it has left the door open for diplomacy and for talks, but at the same time, it says it doesn’t trust the Americans, and the justification for that is that the Americans and the Israelis continue to strike against Iran and to create a situation whereby peace cannot happen.”

Before the helicopter’s downing, Trump had expressed renewed optimism over negotiations with Iran.

“We have a good chance” of signing a deal in “two or three days,” Trump said late Monday. But he did not provide any details on why there was reason for optimism. In the two months since the US and Iran agreed to an initial ceasefire, Trump has repeatedly predicted that a deal is near.

“We’re very close to having a very, very good, strong, powerful deal,” the president said.

Mediators, led predominantly by Pakistan, have been trying for weeks to get a deal across the line. However, both Iran and the US have taken hard-line positions.

The US wants to see Iran give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, but Tehran is refusing that. It is demanding relief from sanctions, as well as the release of frozen assets even before a final agreement is in place, something rejected by Trump.

Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said on Monday that the US president’s remarks so far on a possible deal “contradicted the agreed-upon sections,” showing that the US is “neither seeking a ceasefire nor dialogue.”