President Donald Trump announced the United States will launch a new wave of attacks on Iran on Wednesday, June 10, escalating tensions as he accused the Middle Eastern nation of dragging its feet in negotiations. The warning came after the U.S. military retaliated for Iran shooting down an American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz.
“They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social on June 10, marking a sharp shift from his earlier downplaying of the slow pace of peace talks.
When pressed on the threat, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “Well, we’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard.” He added, “We hit them hard yesterday, and we’re going to hit them again hard today. And we’ll see what happens with the deal. We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along. They keep playing us for suckers.”
For weeks, Trump insisted Iran wants a deal while pushing demands for Tehran to dispose of its highly enriched uranium and abandon its nuclear weapons program—conditions Iran has called nonnegotiable. Trump previously discussed his willingness to wait out Iran in long negotiations, but on May 27, he said Iran wrongly assumed he would retreat from his demands to avoid a standoff ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. “We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t care about the midterms.”
As the U.S. war in Iran drags on, Trump and Republicans risk making high gas prices caused by the conflict a focal point of the November midterms. Republicans face an uphill fight to retain their slim House majority, and Democrats see a path to take control of the Senate.
Trump often touted the U.S. blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, which cut Iran off from significant trade, as more effective than bombing. On Tuesday, June 9, he expressed hesitance about renewing military action: “If you do the bombing, you know, a lot of people are going to be killed. Who wants to do that? I don’t,” adding that a signed agreement with Iran would be “actually stronger than the bombing.”
U.S. Central Command said forces launched the latest strikes at about 5 p.m. ET Tuesday, describing them as “self-defense” moves in response to the helicopter attack. The two pilots were unharmed, according to Trump. Iranian state media reported strikes hit targets in Bandar Abbas, Sirik, and Qeshm Island, near Hormuz. Military officials called the operation “a proportional response to recent attacks on U.S. forces and international commercial ships.”
