U.S. Strikes Iranian Targets in the Strait of Hormuz on Election Eve, an American Official Says

The United States conducted defensive strikes on some Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, a U.S. official told the Associated Press, in an escalation that arrived on the eve of the midterm elections.

Iranian state television reported that explosions were heard on Qeshm Island, in the strait. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the targets were Iranians using surface-to-air missiles against U.S. assets. The BBC's live coverage, which reported the strikes via Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, said it had contacted Centcom — the U.S. military command responsible for operations in the Middle East — for comment.

The strikes do not arrive in a vacuum. Officials in the Middle East told the AP that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the Trump administration to carry out new strikes on Iran, and that President Donald Trump has yet to commit to another round of strikes. At a Washington event on Monday, Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would resume attacks on Iran after the midterms, the BBC reported.

Iran, for its part, says it has a two-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume talks with the United States if Washington meets its demands, according to the AP — a diplomatic track now running alongside a military one, in the waterway that carries a large share of the world's oil.

For Texas, the strait is not an abstraction: it is the far end of the pipeline that prices fuel at every pump in the Metroplex, in a state whose energy economy has been a running theme of this election. What Washington does next — another round, as Israel's prime minister is urging, or the talks Iran describes — will be decided after Tuesday's votes are counted, by a Congress whose control those votes decide.