WASHINGTON – A pause in fighting between the United States and Iran came to a screeching halt after Tehran launched what the Trump administration is calling a “surprise attack” that American forces in the Middle East had only minutes to shoot down.
The ballistic missile assault Tuesday, July 28, threatened to reinvigorate a conflict that President Donald Trump has aimed to wind down after months of negotiations. Trump vowed the United States would “beat the f—— s— out of them,” he told Fox News. The latest attacks raised fears of a wider war as Saudi Arabia joined the conflict and Iran seeks to test Trump’s resolve with the midterm elections looming.
Trump’s promised retaliatory strikes began at about 8 p.m. ET July 29. U.S. Central Command, the arm of the military overseeing operations in the Middle East, announced the strikes, calling them “powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces.”
“We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them. They know it’s coming,” Trump had told reporters earlier at the White House.
Central Command said Tuesday evening that it coordinated with Saudi Arabia’s armed forces to jointly attack Iranian-aligned militants in Iraq responsible for drone attacks on American troops and Saudi energy infrastructure.
Iran’s attacks came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Trump at the White House to discuss the war. Netanyahu was still in Washington on Wednesday and met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Blair House, the guest house in the White House complex where the Israeli leader was staying.
The latest round of fighting and Saudi Arabia’s participation has triggered fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East.
In fact, that has already been happening, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the nonpartisan research institute Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Taleblu said the Middle East has been effectively mired in a regional conflict since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“These are many different campaigns and many different battles,” he said. “The Saudis will dip their toe in and out and other actors will dip their toe in and out. The question is, what comes next? How does that threat network respond?”
The “surprise attack” should not have been a surprise, Taleblu said. The Iranian regime wants to drag the United States into a protracted war.
Iran assumes that “because America is a responsible and restrained power,” it will eventually cut and run, Taleblu said. “But make no mistake, this is a regime that knows that Trump is different from any other U.S. presidents that are trying to run the clock on them. And because this president was willing to roll the dice, willing to actually pull the trigger against the Islamic Republic, they too are more willing to escalate.”
A weekslong ceasefire between the two countries fell apart in early July when the United States restarted its bombing campaign in response to Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Four Americans died in the fighting. Twenty U.S. troop have died during the conflict to date.
Trump warned last week that further attacks on commercial vessels would be met with attacks on Iranian bridges and power plants – repeating a threat he has made and subsequently called off. The threat of force against civilian infrastructure, which experts warned could constitute a war crime, has been a go-to negotiating tactic for Trump. The sides have typically returned to talks after his threats.
Saudi Arabia joined the United States in attacking fighters aligned with Iran, the Persian Gulf state’s Ministry of Defense announced Wednesday, July 29. Saudi Arabia struck Iran-linked militias based in Iraq, the kingdom said.
The strikes mark the Saudis’ entry into the war, in response to attacks from Iranian militants on the kingdom’s oil and gas facilities. The Saudis coordinated their strikes with Central Command, Saudi defense ministry officials said.
Central Command confirmed the coordinated attacks with Saudi jets, saying they targeted “Iran-aligned terrorists” in the eastern part of Iraq. According to military officials, the attacks came in response to Iran-directed attacks on U.S. assets in the region.
“The unwarranted attacks against U.S. forces were not successful,” Central Command said in a statement.
Centcom said in a statement July 28 statement that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliated proxies “must cease these attacks to avoid further U.S. military response.”
Taleblu said Trump should not attack tunnels and bridges. It may be more wise, Taleblu said, for the United States and its allies to strike paramilitary centers and Iranian military bases. It can also target Iran’s judiciary, which has continued to execute Iranian protesters.
“The president needs to flip the script on the Islamic Republic,” he said.
Though it is crucial for Trump to respond, Taleblu said, it is also critical that he does not make a rushed decision.
“If the president slides back into the posture that existed in the spring, where there’s just threats against civilian infrastructure, I think that puts him in the worst of all possible worlds.”
The latest rounds of fighting and Trump’s tendency to make and withdraw threats suggest each side is trying to gain leverage in future talks, said Emily Harding, the National Security Council’s Iran director under President George W. Bush.
“This is the way that Iran operates. This is how they like to demonstrate that they are going to squeeze every last bit of value out of a negotiation,” said Harding, now director of the Intelligence, National Security and Technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank that analyzes defense issues.
Because Trump considers himself a master negotiator and believes he can achieve peace through strength, “he’s going to try to show how strong he can be and thus win concessions,” she said. “It’s also going to be sort of his default: ‘I will keep hitting you until you make concessions.'”
Harding warned that the pattern of on-again, off-again fighting could continue through the fall, until after the midterm elections.
“I think come mid-November, Trump has very little incentive to hold back, and that’s going to be a moment where he pushes very hard on the military front,” she said. “There’s no incentive for the Iranians to cave at the moment.
“I think what this administration misjudged about them is that even the second-tier leadership and the third-tier leadership that we’re stuck with now, they very much have an incentive to preserve the state and to preserve the ideological foundation.”
Francesca Chambers is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY who covers foreign policy. Follow her on X @fran_chambers.
Michael Collins writes about the intersection of politics and culture. A veteran reporter, he has covered the White House and Congress. Follow him on X: @mcollinsNEWS.