NY Times is also reporting the latest escalation as its no. 1 story right now.
Hours after Iranian negotiators arrived in Qatar for talks on ending the war, U.S. forces struck missile launch sites in Iran and boats trying to emplace mines, American officials said Monday night.
U.S. Central Command characterized the strikes in southern Iran as defensive and said they had been intended “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”
“Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing cease-fire,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, a Central Command spokesman, said in a statement.
The strikes came on a day when Israel signaled that it planned to
intensify its fight against the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
With the two conflicts closely intertwined, escalation in the fighting in Lebanon might make it still harder for negotiators to reach a peace deal. Iran has said that any agreement should cover both the war with the United States and Israel, and the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah.
On Monday evening, after vowing that any agreement reached would be “great and meaningful” or “there will be no deal,” President Trump said he expected Iran either to turn its enriched uranium over to the United States or to destroy it in front of neutral witnesses.