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A pause in fighting between the U.S. and Iran came to a screeching halt after Tehran launched what the Trump administration is calling a "surprise attack" that American forces in the Middle East had only minutes to shoot down.

The July 28 ballistic missile assault threatened to reinvigorate a conflict that President Donald Trump has aimed to wind down after months of negotiations. Trump vowed the U.S. would "beat the f------ s--- out of them," he told Fox News. The latest attacks raised fears of a wider war as Saudi Arabia joined the conflict and Iran seeks to test Trump's resolve with the midterm elections looming.

Trump's promised retaliatory strikes on Iran began at about 8 p.m. ET on July 29. Central Command, the arm of the military overseeing operations in the Middle East, announced the attacks, calling them "powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces."

"We're going to be hitting them very hard because it's our turn to hit them. They know it's coming," Trump had told reporters earlier at the White House.

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Washington has reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports after the collapse of a planned peace deal to end the US-Israeli war on Iran. 

For decades, the US has tried to isolate Iran, holder of the world’s third largest proven oil reserves, from the global shipping industry with a range of sanctions.

However, the Islamic Republic has been able to maintain some revenue through a network of rickety tankers often described as its “shadow fleet”, which occupy a legal grey zone and use subterfuge to skirt the US measures.

How do shadow fleets work?

Shadow tankers, also known as “dark fleets” or “ghost fleets”, are ships that operate on the fringes of the global shipping industry to transport oil and other commodities from countries facing western sanctions.

Many are ageing vessels that evade detection on marine traffic databases by turning off their mandatory tracking signals or broadcasting false locations. 

Iran is not the only country involved in such operations: Russia, which is also subject to oil sanctions, likewise operates a shadow fleet. Venezuela did so until the US attack on the country earlier this year and the seizure of many of its tankers.

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As munitions streaked through the night sky, a plaintive cry like a whale song echoed in the darkness. U.S. troops grabbed their gear and headed for shelter as the warning sirens rang out, a leaked video shows.

The military personnel, clad in a mix of combat fatigues and gym attire, piled into a bunker, huddling in the darkness. “Guys, off the walls if we can,” a woman, likely a medic, advised, warning about the danger of traumatic brain injuries.

The footage, reportedly from Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, where three U.S. troops were killed during Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks on July 17 and 18, offers a glimpse of the dangers faced by U.S. forces across the Middle East.

The attacks are continued demonstrations of Iran’s ability to target U.S. bases across the Middle East and kill U.S. troops, despite months of claims by President Donald Trump and self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth that Iran’s military was annihilated. As this fiction has collapsed, U.S. Central Command has refused to discuss the number and scale of the strikes. “I have nothing for you on that,” Maj. Emma Thompson, the command’s media operations chief, told The Intercept.

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The US has paused strikes on Iran for a second night as top military officials advised Donald Trump to halt his bombing campaign, and diplomatic negotiations have continued to avoid a return to all-out war.

Trump is said to be weighing up diplomatic and military options in the nearly five-month-old conflict, with Benjamin Netanyahu expected to visit the White House on Tuesday. The Israeli prime minister is a vocal critic of Washington’s negotiations with Iranian leaders and has pressed for the US to continue its strikes against Iran.

Netanyahu is under considerablehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/26/us-pauses-trump-netanyahu-attacks-on-iran-talks-hormuz?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us political pressure to show that his military campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon have yielded results before elections scheduled for October.

Tehran said on Sunday it would pause what it called “retaliatory” attacks against US allies in the region. “These [US] attacks continued until two nights ago, but over the past two nights the Americans have stopped their attacks,” said the army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia. “Our strategy has essentially been retaliatory, we have also halted our retaliatory operations.”

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Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors’ subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14 a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a café at about 11 a.m. Bravo’s sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the attack.

Upon arriving at the crime scene, officers say they found five 9mm shell casings and Bravo’s injured driver, but no sign of the police detail that had been assigned to protect her. The Police Directorate, which operates entirely under the executive branch, has launched a probe to determine if there’d been an internal security breach.

Bravo is the 26th member of Ecuador’s justice system to be assassinated since 2020 and the second individual investigating state crimes murdered that week. Besides her usual caseload of homicide and organized crime, Bravo had been working the Fiorella, Negra Francisca, and Don Maca cases—a series of drone attacks on civilian fishing ships exposed by Drop Site in April. Two of the boat’s crews returned home and reported being abducted, blindfolded, and starved for eight days by American gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship, before being abandoned in El Salvador.

The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances endorsed the calls for an investigation, demanding that the U.S. provide information on the whereabouts of the eight still-missing men and any involvement in the matter by April 27. To date, the United States has not responded.

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The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) struck a tanker in the Black Sea, a Russian pontoon crossing and a concentration of Russian personnel as part of broader efforts to weaken Mosconotw’s military and economic capabilities.

The General Staff of the AFU confirmed the strikes, which were conducted overnight Wednesday-Thursday.

“A tanker was hit in the Black Sea,” the General Staff said, adding that the vessel transported Russian oil, petroleum products and fuel for the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

The statement did not identify the tanker or provide more details about the extent of the damage.

According to the statement, the AFU also struck a pontoon crossing near Novoekonomichne in the Donetsk region. Russian troops were reportedly using the crossing to support military logistics, alongside transferring personnel and equipment.

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