Saturday 07 / November / 2026
Washington: Diplomatic efforts by mediating countries to end the US-Israeli war on Iran are intensifying amid concerns over further escalation, as the United States continues what it describes as limited military strikes against Iranian targets.
US President Donald Trump said the American military had carried out fresh limited strikes against Iran, targeting its air defence systems.
Iranian state media reported hearing two explosions in the Suza area of Qeshm Island on Friday. Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported today that preliminary information indicated two missiles had struck the island, although no official details were available on the extent of possible damage.
The developments have heightened fears of a possible large-scale US military operation against Iran, which has repeatedly warned that it would retaliate against any further attacks.
Since September, Iran has proposed a seven-day plan calling for the lifting of the blockade on its ports and the unfreezing of its assets, followed by the reopening of the disputed waterway. Washington has yet to accept the proposal.
Trump says US is not at war with Iran
US President Donald Trump has described the ongoing confrontation with Iran as “not a war”, claiming that Washington has made significant progress in dealing with Tehran and is currently extracting more oil than before the hostilities.
“We made a lot of progress with Iran. We’re taking out more oil now than we were before the war. It’s not a war. It can’t be a war when for five months nobody was hurt, killed, or anything else. It’s not a war,” Donald Trump said.
These assertions come amid persistent ambiguity regarding the trajectory of the US military campaign targeting Iran, alongside ongoing deliberations concerning fresh air strikes. His contention that current tensions do not constitute a war persists despite White House deliberations regarding active military options, while broader friction with Tehran remains a primary regional concern.
Furthermore, the American leader asserted that regional stability depended entirely on his administration’s past interventions to obstruct Iranian atomic development.
In a statement disseminated through his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump stated that his personal intervention against Iran’s nuclear ambitions remained universally recognised yet deliberately underreported.
“Israel and, in fact, the entire Middle East, WOULD NOT EXIST TODAY if I did not stop Iran from having a Nuclear Weapon. Nobody wants to say that, but everybody knows it’s true!” he wrote.
Trump has repeatedly portrayed operations directed at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as an unqualified triumph. Both Washington and Israeli forces carried out extensive bombardments targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities across 2025 and 2026, framing deterrence against the acquisition of atomic weapons as their core objective.
Nevertheless, a full assessment of the damage sustained by Tehran’s atomic enterprise remains inconclusive. A Congressional Research Service assessment published in October highlighted that the precise operational impact on indigenous weapons manufacturing capability remains undefined. The evaluation additionally emphasised past intelligence consensus indicating that Tehran had refrained from constructing atomic devices. Meanwhile, Iranian authorities persistently refute ambitions concerning nuclear weapons development, asserting that exclusively civilian applications govern their domestic atomic framework.
