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strikeSep 3, 2026

Iran Rains Missiles on Kuwait as US Patriot Stockpile Nears Crisis Point

Summary

Before dawn Thursday, Kuwait's air defenses lit up over the Gulf again — Patriot batteries and radar networks tracking another wave of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones aimed at US military installations across the country. The intercepts worked. But each one came at a price that defense analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies say the United States is running out of time to pay: the US has already burned through roughly two-thirds of its pre-war Patriot missile interceptor inventory since February, and production lines cannot restock until 2029 — regardless of how quickly Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's financial siege forces Iran to the table. The simultaneous arrival of Thursday's strikes and Bessent's declaration that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is in "economic death throes" frames the central tension of a seven-month-old conflict that is now being prosecuted on two interlocked fronts: a kinetic exchange that is draining irreplaceable missile defense hardware faster than it can be manufactured, and a financial siege whose most critical variable — whether China continues buying Iranian oil — remains stubbornly unresolved. The question for every American taxpayer watching gas prices hover near $90-per-barrel levels is which front gives way first. Missiles Before Dawn: What Kuwait Intercepted Kuwait's General Staff confirmed Thursday morning that its air defense systems were actively confronting Iranian missiles and drone attacks, urging residents to follow safety instructions and explaining that any explosion sounds were the result of interception operations — not impacts on populated areas. Iranian state broadcaster IRIB separately reported that US military bases on Kuwaiti soil had been struck, with local sources describing smoke rising from at least one installation. As of publication, neither US Central Command nor Kuwaiti authorities had confirmed damage to bases or casualties from Thursday's exchange. The strikes were part of a broader Iranian retaliatory salvo that also targeted US assets in Jordan, Bahrain, and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region. Jordan's air defenses intercepted 10 of 13 Iranian ballistic missiles, with three falling in remote areas without casualties. Bahrain reported destroying Iranian drones. The IRGC claimed it struck a maintenance center and warehouses in Erbil. The exchange followed a September 1 CENTCOM strike package explicitly designed to degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — hitting what CENTCOM described as IRGC targets including air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine-laying capabilities, and communications sites. Tehran's response followed within hours, as it has each time: Iranian state-affiliated media promised retaliation "several times greater" than the US strikes, and missiles and drones were in the air across the region before the next day's sunrise. What Every Intercept Actually Costs The operational logic of Kuwait's air defenses — and those of its Gulf allies — conceals a structural problem that Thursday's barrages are making measurably worse. CSIS analysts Mark Cancian and Chris Park published an analysis in late July documenting what the conflict is doing to US missile defense inventories. Their findings: the US has expended approximately 65% of its pre-war Patriot interceptor inventory — burning through roughly 1,060 to 1,430 missiles from a pre-conflict stockpile of 2,330. THAAD inventories have declined by approximately 38%, leaving between 234 and 278 interceptors from a pre-war supply of 452. Cancian and Park concluded there are no good alternatives to Patriot and THAAD for ballistic missile defense. Navy ships armed with Standard Missiles — the SM-6 and SM-3 — can theoretically fill some gaps, but the analysts noted they are generally too far away for effective ground-based base defense in Kuwait and Bahrain. The production math is stark. The US took delivery of only 172 Patriot interceptors in fiscal year 2026 against a consumption rate of more than 1,000 since the war began. Even with a record $58.6 billion Lockheed Martin contract signed in late July to ramp production of the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor through fiscal 2032, the pipeline cannot be accelerated retroactively. "It takes several years to produce a missile," Cancian told the BBC. "If you put money into the system today, you wouldn't get a missile for three or four years. Sometimes even five. What we're getting now are missiles that were funded in 2023." THAAD stocks, projected to return to pre-war levels by the end of 2029, face similar timelines. Tomahawk cruise missiles — also heavily consumed in strikes on Iranian targets — are not expected to return to pre-war levels until late 2030 or early 2031. The strategic implication, per CSIS, is not primarily about this conflict: it is about what comes next. "The greater strategic risk is not sustaining the current conflict," Cancian and Park wrote, "but responding to another high-intensity contingency before Patriot and THAAD inventories can be rebuilt." A Taiwan Strait crisis or Korean Peninsula escalation that erupts before 2029 would find US allies and forces with measurably degraded air defense capacity. The cost asymmetry compounds the problem. Each Iranian Shahed drone costs its manufacturer roughly $20,000 to $30,000. Each US Patriot interceptor fired to stop it costs approximately $3.9 million — a ratio of roughly 130:1. Kuwait's defenses alone have intercepted 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones since the conflict began in late February. The UAE's air defense networks destroyed 537 ballistic missiles, more than 2,250 drones, and 26 cruise missiles through early April alone — a consumption rate that has driven urgent discussions in Washington and Gulf capitals about interceptor replenishment timelines. What the Fateh-110 Debris Field Reveals The tactical danger is not only about what gets through. It is also about what gets intercepted. On May 30, a single Iranian Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missile — a precision-guided system with a range of roughly 200 to 300 kilometers (124 to 186 miles) — targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Kuwaiti air defenses intercepted it successfully. But debris from the intercept wounded approximately five US military personnel and civilian contractors and destroyed one MQ-9 Reaper drone while severely damaging a second — representing an estimated $60 million in hardware losses from a single engagement. Each MQ-9 Reaper carries a procurement value of approximately $30 million, making even successful intercepts a costly proposition when the debris field lands on high-value assets. A subsequent incident at Camp Buehring in northeastern Kuwait demonstrated a different failure mode altogether. Reporting from late April 2026 revealed that an Iranian Air Force F-5 fighter aircraft had penetrated the installation's layered defenses and conducted a successful bombing run — a reminder that drone and missile saturation attacks can overwhelm the detection and tracking capacity of air defense architectures that were not designed to handle simultaneous threat streams across multiple vectors. Bessent's Financial Campaign: Bombing Without Bombs While missiles arced over Kuwait before dawn Thursday, a different campaign was being prosecuted from Asheville, North Carolina — where Bessent had been meeting with G20 finance ministers through the week. "Iran is in economic death throes," Bessent told reporters. The IRGC was being "economically asphyxiated," he said, and Tehran would soon be ready to negotiate. Addressing IRGC leadership directly, Bessent warned: "We know where in the British Virgin Islands your accounts are at these trust companies. We know the $100 million houses you have around the world, and we are going to freeze those." The mechanism he is wielding is called correspondent banking — the unglamorous but load-bearing plumbing of the global financial system. Here is how it works: oil is priced in US dollars globally. For a bank in Dubai or Shanghai to settle a dollar-denominated transaction, it needs an account at a US financial institution — a "correspondent" relationship. Remove that account, and the bank cannot participate in the global oil trade. This is not a symbolic sanction; it is a structural severing. The Treasury Department demonstrated this precisely on August 28 under Operation Economic Outcast, when its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed revoking correspondent banking access for the UAE branches of Banque Misr — Egypt's second-largest bank. Treasury assessed that between January 2024 and June 2026, those five branches processed approximately $1.8 billion for 103 companies potentially linked to Iranian shadow banking networks, including apparent front companies used by Iran's Defense Ministry and the IRGC. The UAE Central Bank responded by opening a forensic probe of the branches. Bessent confirmed at the G20 that a specific bank sanction would likely be announced in the coming days, with another the week after — a shift to weekly action following August 24's "Economic D-Day," when the administration sanctioned nearly 60 corporations, individuals, and vessels across multiple jurisdictions. The Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned more than 100 vessels linked to Iran's shadow fleet since the start of the year — ghost tankers that use AIS transponder spoofing, false flags, falsified cargo records, and ship-to-ship transfers to route Iranian crude to China while evading detection. Bessent told the Associated Press the campaign would mean "financial violence if necessary." The China Problem Nobody Has Solved The financial campaign's most critical variable remains China. Beijing buys roughly 90% of Iran's oil exports — approximately 1.38 million barrels daily in 2025 according to analytics firm Kpler — and has so far issued defiant warnings rather than compliance signals. China's independent refiners commonly purchase Iranian crude relabeled as Malaysian or Indonesian oil, routed through intermediaries specifically to avoid the dollar-based financial system. The US has targeted smaller Hong Kong and mainland entities involved in these flows, but has stopped short of sanctioning major Chinese financial institutions — a step that sanctions historian Nicolas Mulder of Cornell University warned would "cause serious upheaval and prompt retaliation." Mulder also flagged a second-order risk: secondary sanctions that disrupt global oil flows would push inflation higher and could force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates — a problem for a Treasury Department that Mulder noted was "already finding itself having to quell a growing unease in the bond markets." Bessent told the AP that "all options are on the table" for sanctioning Beijing for continued Iranian crude purchases, while insisting that US-China dialogue at the G20 had been "productive" and "intentionally quiet." He said both sides agree on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — a statement of alignment that has so far not translated into Chinese compliance. The initial results of the August 24 sanctions package fell short of the dramatic behavioral change the administration's language suggested. Chinese entities continued buying Iranian crude. Iranian bank branches in Dubai and Abu Dhabi remained open days after the UAE had pledged to sever financial ties. Commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, and the UAE continued. One US official acknowledged the "cure period" built into the sanctions architecture — intended to give third parties time to comply voluntarily — had yet to produce visible behavioral change in the most critical trade relationships. Former Treasury official Claire O'Neill McCleskey, co-founder of sanctions advisory firm Clarity Compliance Consulting, offered a measured assessment of the campaign's current status: "So far this appears to be just the threat of additional secondary sanctions under authorities that Treasury has had since 2020." Tehran's Answer: Defiance and Oil Leverage Iran's leadership has shown no inclination toward concession. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — who also serves as Tehran's chief negotiator — was unambiguous in June: his Switzerland remarks made clear that "management of the Strait will never return to the way it was before the war." More recently, Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, warned Gulf neighbors that if they join Washington's economic campaign, "not a drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz," with additional threats to target "other routes through which oil is exported from the Persian Gulf." Iranian Economy Minister Ali Madanizadeh told state television that Tehran had prepared a two-year strategy for dealing with the sanctions and predicted the United States would suffer "another defeat." That defiance is backed by real economic leverage. Before the conflict, roughly 20% of the world's daily oil supply — and approximately 20% of global liquefied natural gas — transited the Strait of Hormuz. Commercial tanker traffic through the strait has fallen more than 90% since late February. The World Bank slashed its 2026 forecast to 2.5% growth, describing the slowdown as the worst blow to the global economy since COVID-19. US crude oil prices climbed more than $4 per barrel — nearly 5% — to approximately $90 following this week's renewed exchange, with Brent crude rising above $94. Most Gulf producers — Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iran itself — have no practical alternative export route. Saudi Arabia can reroute some exports through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, and the UAE can use its 1.5-million-barrel-per-day Fujairah pipeline — but these options cannot compensate for what the strait handles at volume. The US has attempted to restore shipping through a combination of naval escort operations, mine-clearing, and strikes on Iranian radar and missile infrastructure along the coast. Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated last month that combined US Navy operations and pipeline flows were moving roughly 15 million barrels of oil and products out of the Persian Gulf region per day — though the baseline remains a fraction of pre-war throughput. Two Campaigns Racing the Same Clock What has emerged by September 2026 is a conflict being prosecuted simultaneously on two distinct but interlocked fronts: kinetic operations that are consuming irreplaceable missile defense hardware at rates that outpace production, and a financial siege that the Treasury Department explicitly frames as "the financial equivalent of a bombing campaign." The convergence of these two timelines is the story beneath Thursday's strikes. Iran's launch failure rates appear to be degrading — US officials noted roughly half Iran's missiles fired at Jordan on September 1 failed to reach their intended airspace — suggesting that sustained American strikes on Iranian radar, communications, and logistics are compounding the regime's operational capacity. But the IRGC retains enough capacity to sustain weekly salvos, and Tehran's political calculus appears to be that continued defiance serves the regime better than concession. On the financial side, the Bessent campaign's most important test remains ahead — whether the escalating weekly bank sanctions can compel behavioral change from China before the economic pressure on Iran either softens or provokes an escalation that derails the financial campaign entirely. Every time an Iranian missile fails to reach its target over Jordan or Kuwait, it registers as evidence that US kinetic pressure is working. Every time a Chinese refinery refiles an Iranian crude cargo as Malaysian, it registers as evidence that the financial siege has a ceiling. CSIS's analysis makes the stakes explicit: the US and its allies cannot sustain this pace indefinitely. The Patriot depletion that Thursday's intercepts are deepening creates a multi-theater vulnerability window that extends until at least 2029 — meaning any simultaneous crisis in the Pacific would find US air defense networks measurably thinner than they were when this conflict began. Whether Bessent's financial campaign can force a resolution before that vulnerability window becomes strategically decisive is a question that Thursday's before-dawn missile trails over Kuwait brought into sharper relief. For more than 50,000 US service members currently deployed across Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraq, the abstract calculus of interceptor production timelines plays out in a more immediate register: another pre-dawn scramble, another round of air raid sirens, and another morning spent accounting for every soldier within the blast radius of a debris field. Frequently Asked Questions How many Iranian missiles has Kuwait's air defense actually intercepted since the war began? According to compiled conflict figures, Kuwait's air defense intercepted 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones since Iran began striking Kuwaiti targets in late February 2026. This pace has stress-tested Patriot missile batteries and their interceptor inventories throughout the conflict, contributing to the broader US stockpile depletion documented by CSIS. What is "correspondent banking" and why is Bessent using it as a weapon against Iran? Correspondent banking is the plumbing that connects the global financial system. Because oil is priced in US dollars, any bank anywhere in the world that wants to settle a dollar-denominated transaction needs an account — a "correspondent" relationship — at a US financial institution. The US Treasury can use regulatory authority to revoke that correspondent access, effectively cutting the bank off from the global oil trade without issuing a formal sanction in the traditional sense. This is the mechanism behind the Banque Misr UAE action: FinCEN proposed barring US banks from maintaining dollar-clearing accounts for the Egyptian bank's UAE branches after assessing they processed approximately $1.8 billion for companies in Iranian shadow banking networks. Why does the US Patriot missile depletion crisis matter beyond the Iran conflict? CSIS analysts Mark Cancian and Chris Park concluded that the greater strategic risk is not sustaining the current conflict but responding to another high-intensity contingency before Patriot and THAAD inventories can be rebuilt. Patriot stocks are projected to return to pre-war levels by mid-2029; THAAD by the end of 2029. Tomahawk cruise missiles face an even longer timeline. Any major conflict that erupts in the Pacific or Korean Peninsula before those stockpiles are rebuilt — involving China, Russia, or North Korea — would find US air defense networks measurably degraded relative to where they stood in January 2026. Will China ever stop buying Iranian oil under US pressure? That remains the central unresolved question of the US financial campaign. China's independent refiners imported roughly 1.38 million barrels daily in 2025, relabeling it as Malaysian or Indonesian oil to avoid dollar-based payment systems. Cornell historian Nicolas Mulder, who specializes in sanctions, has warned that sanctioning a major Chinese bank — the step needed to truly coerce Beijing — "would cause serious upheaval and prompt retaliation," potentially including China dumping US Treasuries or restricting rare-earth exports. Bessent has said "all options are on the table" but has not yet moved against any large Chinese financial institution. ⓒ 2026 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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  • Zachary ChambersBy Zachary Chambers

    Before dawn Thursday, Kuwait's air defenses lit up over the Gulf again — Patriot batteries and radar networks tracking another wave of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones aimed at US military installations across the country. The intercepts worked. But each one came at a price …

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Trump doubles down on sanctions, military pressure as Iran refuses to yield

○ 1 source

Washington: Confronted by an intransigent Iranian government that has refused to back down in the face of a massive military campaign, President Donald Trump appears to have settled on a dual-prong approach that combines economic pressure with the potential of a devastating escalation in force.

Having launched "Operation Economic Outcast" just last week to try to isolate Iran from its remaining global trade partners, the Trump administration also resumed strikes in recent days, prompting Iranian retaliation that has renewed concerns of an all-out regional war.

Also Read: Trump says US gave Iran many chances, dismisses value of any deal: Report However, the combination of already intense sanctions on Iran and an off-and-on bombing campaign since the war began more than six months ago has not bowed the Iranian leadership and has left the administration struggling to find a way to wind down the conflict.

Tehran has dug in its heels - to Trump's frustration - as energy prices rise, the global economy roils and poll numbers on the administration's handling of the war dip ahead of November's midterm congressional elections. Trump said Wednesday that he didn't think the conflict would last "much longer," but he again shrugged off suggestions that its unpopularity and high gasoline prices resulting from Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz would affect the elections for Republicans.

"It doesn't matter. And I'm not affected by the election," he told reporters. "I'm not running. But my party is running, and I'm going to help my party. But I think my party respects the fact that we're not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon." A regional diplomat briefed on the matter described the current impasse between Tehran and Washington as reflective of both countries' domestic priorities: the midterm elections for Trump and Republicans and the internal crises within Iran.

Also Read: Trump says US campaign against Iran will not continue for ‘too long’ Domestic issues are critical reasons why neither side is willing to blink first, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

The diplomat said negotiations, including those between Iran and Oman or even Iran and the U.S., will not go anywhere without addressing the initial catalyst of war: Israel. And the diplomat was skeptical of the Trump administration's new sanctions plan, saying the threats require more explanation than what the U.

S. has provided so far. Just one branch of an Egyptian bank in the United Arab Emirates has been targeted so far. For actual sanctions to bite, experts agree that they must apply to Iran's main trading partners: mainly China but also India and Russia.

But Trump is loath to target China especially as he is preparing to host President Xi Jinping later this month. Trump also insists that the U.S. has control over the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world's oil transited before the war began.

The strategic waterway has been a key pressure point for Iran, and reopening it fully has become one of the prime goals for the U.S. administration. Ship traffic through the strait is well below pre-war levels due to the risk of attack if vessels don't comply with an Iranian vetting regime near its coastline, which is in sharp contrast to the unhindered navigation before the war.

There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd's List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war. "As President Trump said, the strait is open and all mines have been cleared," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Thursday.

"The naval blockade remains in full force and effect, and Operation Economic Outcast is underway to sever every remaining economic lifeline sustaining the regime." The White House has repeatedly touted the economic impact that the sanctions have had on Iran, citing its rampant inflation and the massive loss in the value of its currency.

U.S. officials have described Iran's financial system as "one big house of cards." Going forward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "the price" Iran will pay will be primarily economic, "but we reserve the right ... to take military action when necessary - not just to protect ourselves but to prevent them from being able to threaten others as well.

" "They're going to continue to feel the squeeze," he told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade in an interview that aired Wednesday. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he would not characterize the current situation as a "war" but that the administration would respond to any Iranian hostile action.

"Major combat operations are currently not ongoing, and they haven't been ongoing in a very long time," Vance told reporters during a White House briefing. "In fact, what we did just a couple of days ago is that we made it harder for the Iranians to shoot at commercial shipping again in order to ensure the flow of oil and gas into world energy markets.

" President Masoud Pezeshkian is one of the most prominent voices still calling for a negotiated solution. But the hardliners appear to have gained the upper hand, and Iran shows no sign of backing down. Tehran continues to lash out at U.S. interests and allies around the region in response to military strikes.

"This kind of a hybrid approach - the combination of military force, blockade and economic pressure - that is the only option that seems to be available to the United States at this moment," said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Still, he said, "it's been for a long time, but now maybe more than ever, a battle of endurance between the two sides." Amr Hamzawy, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointed to two main reasons for the deteriorating situation.

"One, none of the two parties is satisfied with the outcome - meaning that the current situation does not serve U.S. interests well, and it does not serve Iranian interests well," Hamzawy said. The other reason is how leaders from both sides are perceived at home.

"The Trump administration is afraid of being portrayed in the U.S. as an administration that failed to end a military campaign successfully, and that's going to impact the midterm elections," he said. "And the Iranians, especially the Revolutionary Guard, are quite afraid of appearing as if they are submitting to U.

S. sanctions with no actions on their side, which might hurt them domestically." (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel) Having launched "Operation Economic Outcast" just last week to try to isolate Iran from its remaining global trade partners, the Trump administration also resumed strikes in recent days, prompting Iranian retaliation that has renewed concerns of an all-out regional war.

Also Read: Trump says US gave Iran many chances, dismisses value of any deal: Report However, the combination of already intense sanctions on Iran and an off-and-on bombing campaign since the war began more than six months ago has not bowed the Iranian leadership and has left the administration struggling to find a way to wind down the conflict.

Tehran has dug in its heels - to Trump's frustration - as energy prices rise, the global economy roils and poll numbers on the administration's handling of the war dip ahead of November's midterm congressional elections. Trump said Wednesday that he didn't think the conflict would last "much longer," but he again shrugged off suggestions that its unpopularity and high gasoline prices resulting from Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz would affect the elections for Republicans.

"It doesn't matter. And I'm not affected by the election," he told reporters. "I'm not running. But my party is running, and I'm going to help my party. But I think my party respects the fact that we're not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon." A regional diplomat briefed on the matter described the current impasse between Tehran and Washington as reflective of both countries' domestic priorities: the midterm elections for Trump and Republicans and the internal crises within Iran.

Also Read: Trump says US campaign against Iran will not continue for ‘too long’ Domestic issues are critical reasons why neither side is willing to blink first, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

The diplomat said negotiations, including those between Iran and Oman or even Iran and the U.S., will not go anywhere without addressing the initial catalyst of war: Israel. And the diplomat was skeptical of the Trump administration's new sanctions plan, saying the threats require more explanation than what the U.

S. has provided so far. The Trump administration's economic isolation of Iran is off to a slow startThe administration's new push for Iran's economic isolation was announced with great fanfare last week and a dire warning for all remaining countries to cut off financial and trade ties with Iran or face U.

S. retaliation - but the campaign so far has fallen flat. Just one branch of an Egyptian bank in the United Arab Emirates has been targeted so far. For actual sanctions to bite, experts agree that they must apply to Iran's main trading partners: mainly China but also India and Russia.

But Trump is loath to target China especially as he is preparing to host President Xi Jinping later this month. Trump also insists that the U.S. has control over the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world's oil transited before the war began.

The strategic waterway has been a key pressure point for Iran, and reopening it fully has become one of the prime goals for the U.S. administration. Ship traffic through the strait is well below pre-war levels due to the risk of attack if vessels don't comply with an Iranian vetting regime near its coastline, which is in sharp contrast to the unhindered navigation before the war.

There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd's List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war. "As President Trump said, the strait is open and all mines have been cleared," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Thursday.

"The naval blockade remains in full force and effect, and Operation Economic Outcast is underway to sever every remaining economic lifeline sustaining the regime." The White House has repeatedly touted the economic impact that the sanctions have had on Iran, citing its rampant inflation and the massive loss in the value of its currency.

U.S. officials have described Iran's financial system as "one big house of cards." Going forward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "the price" Iran will pay will be primarily economic, "but we reserve the right ... to take military action when necessary - not just to protect ourselves but to prevent them from being able to threaten others as well.

" "They're going to continue to feel the squeeze," he told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade in an interview that aired Wednesday. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he would not characterize the current situation as a "war" but that the administration would respond to any Iranian hostile action.

"Major combat operations are currently not ongoing, and they haven't been ongoing in a very long time," Vance told reporters during a White House briefing. "In fact, what we did just a couple of days ago is that we made it harder for the Iranians to shoot at commercial shipping again in order to ensure the flow of oil and gas into world energy markets.

" Combining military force and sanctions on Iran 'is the only option,' one analyst saysComplicating things for the U.S., Iran's leadership has shown signs of divisions between moderates more open to a diplomatic solution and hardliners who want to press ahead with a more confrontational approach.

President Masoud Pezeshkian is one of the most prominent voices still calling for a negotiated solution. But the hardliners appear to have gained the upper hand, and Iran shows no sign of backing down. Tehran continues to lash out at U.S. interests and allies around the region in response to military strikes.

"This kind of a hybrid approach - the combination of military force, blockade and economic pressure - that is the only option that seems to be available to the United States at this moment," said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Still, he said, "it's been for a long time, but now maybe more than ever, a battle of endurance between the two sides." Amr Hamzawy, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointed to two main reasons for the deteriorating situation.

"One, none of the two parties is satisfied with the outcome - meaning that the current situation does not serve U.S. interests well, and it does not serve Iranian interests well," Hamzawy said. The other reason is how leaders from both sides are perceived at home.

"The Trump administration is afraid of being portrayed in the U.S. as an administration that failed to end a military campaign successfully, and that's going to impact the midterm elections," he said. "And the Iranians, especially the Revolutionary Guard, are quite afraid of appearing as if they are submitting to U.

S. sanctions with no actions on their side, which might hurt them domestically.

Location: Iran
SECTIONS Trump doubles down; Military Pressure As Iran Refuses
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Vance says Iran fight isn't a 'war' as Trump tries to navigate unpopular conflict as election nears

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Washington (AP) — Vice President JD Vance on Thursday rejected the use of the word “war” to describe the U.S. fighting with Iran as he steered clear of predicting that the six-month-old conflict would be over by November's midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to hang on to their narrow majorities in Congress..

“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance said after being asked during a White House press briefing about whether the fighting could be wrapped up before voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 congressional elections. “Right now, there is no active shooting.

” Vance's assertion came even as Iran fired at U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday as it continued to retaliate for rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week. The vice president said the U.S. had a “responsibility” to carry out this week's strikes because Iran continues the targeting of commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Vance's attempt to minimize the intensity of the fighting illuminates the difficult task at hand for Trump and his administration as he tries to persuade American voters to keep Republicans in control of Congress, even as the unpopular conflict — one the White House said at its outset would last a matter of weeks — has driven up gas prices and left consumers grappling with higher inflation.

Vance said he didn’t want to set “artificial timelines." “But when you ask, ‘When will this end?’ You’re asking me a question like, ‘When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?’” Vance said. “I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that question.

You would have to ask the Iranians.” The administration in July faced scrutiny after it reclassifiedfour fallen soldiers as well as dozens of wounded troops in its Defense Casualty Analysis System, which Pentagon officials have repeatedly pointed to as the definitive source on the numbers of dead and wounded from the conflict.

Those killed or wounded in fighting after a brief ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran fell apart were classified in a new category called “Overseas Operations” after initially being tallied in the totals from the war. White House insists more oil is getting out of Gulf, but prices remain high Brent crude prices hovered above $95 per barrel on Thursday.

The international benchmark was around $72 per barrel the day before the conflict began. Still, Trump and his aides have sought to push that the U.S. Navy is in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which accounted for about 20% of the flow of the world's oil prior to the start of the war.

They insist a near pre-war level of Gulf oil is now making its way out of the critical waterway. Vance at Thursday's press briefing said the U.S. escorted about 15 million barrels of oil on Wednesday. This is after Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Wednesday that 17 million barrels were carried through the strait on Monday with assistance from the U.

S. Navy. About 20 million barrels of Gulf oil flowed through the strait prior to the start of the war. But ship traffic through the strait remains well below pre-war levels, according to independent firms that track marine traffic.

There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war. Over the past 28 days, 5 million barrels a day have exited the strait on average, according to TankerTrackers.

com. Other recent estimates have varied from 2 million barrels per day to 6 million barrels per day. Trump has tried to soothe volatile markets Over the course of the war, Trump has repeatedly reported progress in negotiations or called off threats of military action at the last moment when global markets have become jittery.

And markets have reacted swiftly to his public signals of peace or hints of progress. “The administration is still jawboning oil markets,” said Rosemary Kelanic, Middle East director at Defense Priorities, of the administration's claims of dramatically increased flowsof oil.

“And they appear to be doing it again to keep prices from going too high, so that they can extend the timeline before there’s a worse price spike.” With Iran's refusal to back down in the face of the U.S. military campaign, Trump has settled on a dual-prong approach that combines economic pressure with threats of an escalation in force, if necessary.

Trump has consistently emphasized that the campaign launched by the U.S. and Israel has been devastating for Iran’s navy and air force. Iranian officials have said the country has suffered $270 billion in direct and indirect damage. Israeli military strikes in the first weeks of the war wiped out much of the theocratic government’s leadership structure, including its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Still, Iran has found leverage through its own strikes on the strait and Gulf allies of the United States.

But the administration has sought to make the case that the waterway will become less important by the day, even as it asserts that more oil is getting through. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox Business interview this week that the Strait of Hormuz will become a “worthless piece of water” within two years as new land pipelines planned for the region bypass the energy chokepoint.

Trump himself took to social media on Thursday to highlight a news report about Syria's effort to transform the port of Baniyas on the Mediterranean coast into a westward route to international markets for Gulf exporters. Meanwhile, Iran and Oman have recently held talks to discuss a phased approach to jointly managing ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump settles into holding pattern before midterms, analysts say The administration maintains it's making progress economically choking off Iranian hardliners, including the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. At the moment, it would be a leap for Trump to agree to any plan that puts Iran in position to claim control of the strait, analysts say.

“I find it hard to believe the president would agree to anything that hands back any modicum of IRGC control over the strait that has been wrested away,” said Richard Goldberg, who served as a senior adviser on Iran policy in Trump's first administration.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Iran does not appear ready to “let Trump out of the box” despite the massive pain being inflicted on its economy. At the same time, Miller said, Trump seems to have settled into a holding pattern ahead of the midterms — one in which he avoids both a return to the full-throttle bombardment of Iran and making any accommodations to Tehran on the Strait of Hormuz.

“The White House doesn't want a massive war, and they don’t want to be seen as offering massive concessions,” Miller said. “The tack they are taking avoids both of those things.” —- AP writers Jonathan J. Cooper and Josh Boak in Washington and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed reporting.

Location: Iran
AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press
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US’s Vance says all options open for Iran, including military pressure

○ 1 source

US Vice President JD Vance stated that negotiations with Iran are suspended until alleged attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz cease, while Iranian officials describe their efforts to circumvent a reported US naval blockade. Iran’s first vice president warned that Tehran’s potential response to US military actions would be "asymmetrical" and "multi-layered.

" These developments were reported in September 2026, though independent verification of the blockade and specific shipping attacks remains limited.

Location: Tehran
Ali Mustafa; Yashraj Sharma
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Trump says US will soon prevail over Iran

○ 1 source

LONDON, September 4. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump is convinced that his country’s victory over Iran is at hand. In US president's words, "we have already won, because they can’t get a nuclear weapon," he told GB News in an interview. "I did the right thing," the US leader continued, adding that when Washington launched its military operation against the Islamic Republic, Iran was "two weeks may be four weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.

" Now Iran has been thrown 25 years back, Trump added. Besides, Trump assured that the US operation against Iran is a success, and his country now controls the Strait of Hormuz. The US and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28. In June, Washington and Tehran, with Islamabad acting as mediator, signed a memorandum of understanding providing for an immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including in Lebanon.

However, in the early morning hours of July 8, the US resumed large-scale strikes against Iran, accusing it of violating the terms of the agreements reached on the Strait of Hormuz.

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