US Strikes on Iran Rattle Ceasefire, Talks Continue

The day turned on a single overnight decision: the first US strikes on Iran since the April 8 ceasefire. American forces hit missile sites and boats laying mines in southern Iran, killing four Iranian soldiers, in an action Tehran condemned as a ceasefire violation. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it reserved the "legitimate and definite" right to retaliate and claimed it had shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone and fired on an RQ-4 and an F-35 that entered its airspace. In a 14-page Eid message, supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared that Gulf states would no longer host US bases and that Washington would have no safe haven in the region.

President Donald Trump framed the strikes from Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and used his Memorial Day address to announce the "self-defense" operation. He honored 13 service members killed in the conflict with Iran, singling out Maj. Ariana G. Savino, who died in a KC-135 crash in western Iraq in March.

Remarkably, the bombing did not break the negotiation. Iran's foreign ministry denounced the strike but kept its delegation at talks mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, where negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf continued working in Doha to unlock more than $12 billion in frozen Iranian assets -- the last major dispute before a broader deal Trump said on May 24 had been "largely negotiated." Trump pressed his advantage, asking Arab and Muslim leaders to normalize relations with Israel as part of any agreement, a demand that met resistance. A senior Iranian armed-forces spokesperson, Abolfazl Shekarchi, warned that renewed US or Israeli attacks would draw a response "beyond regional borders," after reports of strikes on Iranian vessels near Larak Island.

The conflict kept rippling through energy markets. Brent crude rose 3 percent, and UK Maritime Trade Operations reported an external explosion on a tanker 60 nautical miles off Muscat, with the crew safe but some bunker fuel spilled. US Central Command denied a Wall Street Journal report that the Navy had resumed escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, insisting its "Project Freedom" escort mission remained suspended even as a Greek supertanker carrying two million barrels of crude was said to be transiting.

Trump will gather his cabinet at Camp David on Wednesday, hours after the strikes, to weigh the next move. Among those expected is Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation on May 22 to support her husband through a rare form of bone cancer; her last day is set for June 30, closing a roughly 15-month tenure in which she was largely sidelined from the administration's Iran-war deliberations. Trump has named Principal Deputy Director Aaron Lukas as acting director.