President Donald Trump said Iran wants to reach a settlement with the United States as American forces launched two new waves of strikes against Iranian coastal defenses, missile sites and military infrastructure on Wednesday, July 15, escalating a conflict that has entered its fifth month without a broader agreement.

Speaking at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, Trump said Iranian officials wanted to negotiate but left open the possibility of further military action if no agreement is reached.

“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle,” Trump said. “We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off.”

Trump also said Iran would be defeated soon, while the administration continued weighing additional military options intended to weaken Tehran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping and U.S. forces throughout the region.

U.S. Central Command said the first wave began at approximately 6 a.m. Eastern time and targeted coastal-defense systems and cruise-missile storage and launch sites on Greater Tunb Island during a 90-minute operation. A second wave began roughly nine hours later and struck targets in several locations, including Bandar Abbas, Iran’s largest port and a major base for the Iranian navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

CENTCOM said the strikes hit Iranian command centers, air-defense positions, missile and drone capabilities, and coastal-surveillance facilities. American officials said the campaign was intended to degrade Iran’s ability to interfere with traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where military activity and attacks on commercial vessels have sharply reduced shipping.

Iran said late Saturday that it had closed the strait. Military operations have further limited vessel traffic through the passage, which handled approximately one-fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war. Brent crude closed Wednesday at $84.95 a barrel, its highest level in about a month.

The American military also said it disabled an empty oil tanker that was sailing toward Kharg Island after the vessel ignored repeated warnings. U.S. forces fired Hellfire missiles into the ship’s smokestack. Since restoring a naval blockade of Iran on Tuesday, the military has redirected two ships and disabled another vessel, according to CENTCOM.

Iran retaliated against American military positions in neighboring countries. The Revolutionary Guard said it struck U.S. targets in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, including a radar system and an area used by American personnel at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. The United States had not released a public casualty assessment from those attacks as of Wednesday evening.

Iranian media reported explosions near Bandar Abbas and in the areas of Ahvaz, Konarak, Sirik and Qeshm. The state broadcaster said strikes near a hospital in Ahvaz that includes a pediatric cancer center forced a temporary evacuation. Independent confirmation of the reported damage and casualties was not immediately available.

Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and top negotiator, said Tehran would insist on what he called Iranian arrangements governing the Strait of Hormuz. He described the conflict as an “essential and existential war with America.”

Iran’s military has said the strait will not reopen unless the United States complies with a 14-point memorandum of understanding signed in June and accepts Iranian rules governing ship traffic. The agreement was intended to stop the fighting and create a path toward a broader settlement, but the truce later collapsed.

Three U.S. officials said the latest strikes were also reducing Iranian capabilities that would need to be destroyed before more complex American military operations could be undertaken. One official described the attacks as “shaping operations” that could prepare the battlefield if Trump orders a larger campaign.

Options discussed within the administration have included seizing Kharg Island, the terminal responsible for roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports, and striking a deeply buried facility associated with Iran’s nuclear program known as Pickaxe Mountain. Trump said Tuesday that U.S. forces had avoided Iranian oil facilities during earlier strikes on Kharg Island but did not rule out taking control of it later.

Iran has suffered extensive damage to its conventional military and defense-industrial base since U.S. and Israeli operations began on February 28, but American officials say Tehran retains significant missile and drone capabilities. Those weapons have allowed Iran to continue attacking tankers and military sites despite the destruction of much of its traditional naval force.

Trump said Tuesday that American negotiators had communicated with Iranian representatives and told them to make a deal. Wednesday’s strikes showed that the administration is continuing diplomatic contacts while simultaneously increasing military pressure.

Trump also announced that Iran had permitted an American citizen prevented from leaving the country since 2024 to depart. Human-rights attorney Jared Genser identified her as Dena Karari and said she was safely traveling back to the United States.

The administration has not announced a new negotiating schedule or the terms Iran would have to accept to end the renewed military campaign.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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