WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, threatened to strike Iran after the first direct exchange of fire in a month: a U.S. attack on rocket launchers on Iran's Larak Island, followed by Iranian missiles aimed at American bases in Jordan.

"We're going to hit them hard," Trump told Fox News, according to chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst, NBC News and Reuters reported. He also said, "There will be a response." Later at the White House he described the coming military reply as narrow. "It's very limited," he told reporters, adding that many of Iran's leaders have been killed and that its navy and air force have been destroyed. "That doesn't mean we won't smack them."

A U.S. official told Reuters and NBC that American forces on Sunday struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island after Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units were "observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into Strait of Hormuz." U.S. Central Command said on X it had taken "limited" action against IRGC minelaying. CENTCOM rejected Tehran's description of the raid as aggression: "Iran created the threat and the U.S. military eliminated it to protect civilian mariners, commercial shipping, and the free flow of global commerce." The strikes were the first known U.S. attacks on Iranian territory since late July, NBC said. Iran's IRGC said several of its "fighters and compatriots" were killed and injured and vowed "punishment." Iranian media put the death toll at three; that figure is Tehran's, not independently confirmed here.

Iran answered by firing ballistic missiles at U.S. positions in Jordan that Iranian media identified as the King Hussein and Al Azraq bases. Jordan's military said it intercepted at least eight missiles Monday morning, NBC reported. Iran also launched drones at the UAE's Al Minhad air base; the UAE Defense Ministry said its air force "engaged" at least one drone over territorial waters.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking Monday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan, said "Iran has never welcomed war," Fars reported via NBC, and that the United States had not "fulfilled its commitments." Other Iranian accounts of his remarks said Tehran was "not looking for war" but would "never sit still in the face of any aggression."

Larak is a small island off Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which about 20 percent of the world's oil moved before the war, NBC said. The waterway has been largely closed during the conflict. The power to reopen it, or to keep hitting launchers that might mine it, sits with the president as commander in chief. Congress is not in the quoted statements from Sunday or Monday.

Trump also posted on Truth Social what NBC described as an AI-generated video of exploding oil infrastructure, captioned "Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!" NBC found no evidence of such an attack. An Iranian energy official told Fars the posts were "absurd" and that Kharg was "calm and stable." Hamid Bord, CEO of the National Iranian Oil Co., said operations had not stopped.

Sources