US Strikes Reported on Iran's Qeshm Island as Explosions Heard, Vance Voices Optimism About a Deal

Several loud explosions were heard on Iran's strategically important Qeshm Island. US media reports said the US military carried out a series of defensive strikes in the Strait of Hormuz area.

Iran's state news agency IRNA said the explosions occurred on Monday night within a very short space of time. Witnesses told IRNA they had seen two aircraft flying over Qeshm Island on Iran's southern coast.

Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said several explosions were also heard from the direction of the sea in the coastal city of Bandar Lengeh.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the US military operation, citing US officials. An official told the paper the preventive, or defensive, strikes were carried out to destroy Iran's capability to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The official also noted that Washington had deliberately kept the operation secret strategically so as not to signal that the United States was becoming involved in a major war.

Another US official confirmed to the Associated Press that Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz had been attacked. He said the strikes targeted Iranian forces that had been using surface-to-air missiles against US military targets.

According to journalists at Fox News and Axios, Washington took the step in response after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted a US aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Fox News journalist Jennifer Griffin, citing US military sources, said the strike did not mean the United States was about to start a new large-scale military campaign in Iran.

Since the incident, no top authority in Washington or Tehran has formally commented. US Central Command also did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Just a short time before the strikes, on Monday, the IRGC had claimed it had used electronic warfare technology to take control of two US surveillance drones south of Qeshm Island. It had also claimed to have destroyed a US MQ-9 drone east of the Strait of Hormuz.

The report of the strikes came at a time when, also on Monday, US Vice-President JD Vance said he was optimistic that diplomatic efforts to end the war were moving in the right direction. Vance told reporters that he and the president both felt pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement, that some progress had been made, and that they would see if more progress could be made.

When journalists asked President Donald Trump whether he had considered resuming strikes on Iran right after Tuesday's midterm elections, Trump replied directly, no. On Truth Social on Monday, Trump wrote that a settlement with Iran could happen quickly. He wrote that oil prices had dropped dramatically by about 10 dollars a barrel because people thought there would be no war with Iran, that Iran wanted a solution as quickly as possible, and that it could happen very soon. Trump told Fox News there was no war raging, that it could happen if they did not make a deal, but that Iran wanted to make a deal very badly and there was a very good chance of a deal.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Tehran's demands and conditions for peace had been clearly conveyed to the US administration and that the ball was now in Washington's court. He said Iran had an outline ready for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. If Washington accepted their conditions, which include lifting the US naval blockade on Iranian ports and stopping hostilities, it would be possible to reopen the strait and restart talks within two days, he said.

The military tension occurred on the night just before the important US midterm elections to be held on Tuesday, November 3. In those elections, President Donald Trump's Republican Party is fighting to retain control of the US House of Representatives and the Senate.