r/WhatTrumpHasDone

The U.S. military is considering officially renaming the war with Iran “Operation Sledgehammer” if the current ceasefire collapses and President Donald Trump decides to re-start major combat operations, according to two U.S. officials.

The discussions about possibly replacing “Operation Epic Fury” with “Operation Sledgehammer” underscore how seriously the administration is considering resuming the war started on Feb. 28, and could allow Trump to argue that it restarts the 60-day clock that requires congressional authorization for war.

The Trump administration declared an end to Operation Epic Fury after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire in early April to pursue diplomatic negotiations. At the time, the administration informed Congress that hostilities with Iran had terminated. But the Pentagon has continued to describe the conflict with Iran as Operation Epic Fury, including when providing public updates. One Pentagon official said that Epic Fury continues and that the ceasefire simply has paused major combat operations.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon directed inquires to the White House. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Any new military combat operations against Iran would be conducted under a new name and operation, a White House official familiar with the discussions said, and from the administration’s point of view this would effectively restart the clock with Congress. Operation Sledgehammer is not the only name under consideration, according to the U.S. officials.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters last week that Operation Epic Fury “is over.”

“The president notified Congress, we’re done with that stage of it,” Rubio said during a White House briefing. “Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation.”

The 1973 War Powers Resolution requires the president notify Congress within 48 hours of starting combat; if not, troops must either be withdrawn within 60 days or Congress must authorize the military action. Epic Fury’s offensive combat operations were paused after 40 days of fighting. The Trump administration has argued that, given the pause, it has not reached the 60-day threshold.

The U.S. and Iran have exchanged fire in recent days as Iran has halted ship passage in the Strait of Hormuz and Trump continues a blockade. Trump is still considering various options for reopening the strait and breaking the stalemate as he expresses deep skepticism that diplomatic talks with Iran will succeed, one of the U.S. officials said, adding that the president has not ordered the U.S. military to restart major combat operations.

“The blockade is giving decision space without major combat operations or putting a lot of folks at risk,” the official said. “The status quo will not persist.”

On Sunday, Iran presented the U.S. with its latest proposal to end the war through a mediator. Trump quickly denounced the plan on social media, writing in all caps that it was “totally unacceptable!”

Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, the president explained that one major sticking point is his insistence that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and that now the ceasefire is “unbelievably weak.”

“I would call it the weakest right now, after reading the piece of garbage they sent us, I didn’t even finish reading it, they said — I’m not going to waste my time reading it. I would say it’s one of the weakest right now,” Trump said, adding: “I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says, ‘Sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living.’”

Trump said he was planning to meet with “a large group of generals” to discuss Iran. Rubio, who also serves as interim national security adviser, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others met Monday to discuss options for the way ahead with Iran, including the continuing tensions around the closed Strait of Hormuz, according to one of the officials and a third U.S. official.

Last month, a White House official told NBC News that Trump’s trip to China, which he leaves for on Tuesday, is among the factors contributing to his decision-making process for determining whether to resume major combat operations against Iran. The official described the president’s visit to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping is a “priority.”

China is the top purchaser of Iranian oil, and the U.S. has accused Beijing of helping Iran target U.S. assets in the Middle East during the war. In recent days, the Trump administration sanctioned some Chinese entities it accuses of providing Iran with satellite imagery to help Tehran target American forces.

If Trump decides to begin another bombing campaign, the U.S. military presence in the region is larger now than when Operation Epic Fury began in February, according to one of the officials and the third official. The U.S. military brought in an additional carrier strike group and replaced and rearmed some of its assets used during the first two months of Operation Epic Fury, according to public remarks by Hegseth.

“We are in a better spot now than on Feb. 27,” one of the U.S. officials said. “We have more firepower and capability.”

The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities.

Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway.

People with knowledge of the assessments said they show — to varying degrees, depending on the level of damage incurred at the different sites — that the Iranians can use mobile launchers that are inside the sites to move missiles to other locations. In some cases they can launch missiles directly from launchpads that are part of the facilities. Only three of the missile sites along the strait remain totally inaccessible, according to the assessments.

Iran still fields about 70 percent of its mobile launchers across the country and has retained roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, according to the assessments. That stockpile encompasses both ballistic missiles, which can target other nations in the region, and a smaller supply of cruise missiles, which can be used against shorter-range targets on land or at sea.

Military intelligence agencies have also reported, based on information from multiple collection streams including satellite imagery and other surveillance technologies, that Iran has regained access to roughly 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide, which are now assessed to be “partially or fully operational,” the people with knowledge of the assessments said.

The findings undercut months of public assurances from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have told Americans that the Iranian military was “decimated” and “no longer” a threat.

On March 9, 10 days into the war, Mr. Trump told CBS News that Iran’s “missiles are down to a scatter” and the country had “nothing left in a military sense.” Mr. Hegseth declared at a Pentagon news conference on April 8 that Operation Epic Fury — the joint U.S.-Israel campaign launched on Feb. 28 — had “decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat-ineffective for years to come.”

The intelligence describing Iran’s remaining military capacity is dated less than a month after that news conference.

Asked about the intelligence assessments, a White House spokeswoman, Olivia Wales, repeated Mr. Trump’s previous assertions that Iran’s military had been “crushed.” She said that Iran’s government knows that its “current reality is not sustainable” and that anyone who “thinks Iran has reconstituted its military is either delusional or a mouthpiece” for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Ms. Wales pointed to a social media post from Mr. Trump on Tuesday declaring that it was “virtual treason” to suggest that Iran’s military was doing well.

Joel Valdez, the acting Pentagon press secretary, responded to questions about the intelligence by criticizing news coverage of the war. “It is so disgraceful that The New York Times and others are acting as public relations agents for the Iranian regime in order to paint Operation Epic Fury as anything other than a historic accomplishment,” he said in a statement.

The new intelligence assessments suggest that Mr. Trump and his military advisers overestimated the damage that the U.S. military could inflict on Iranian missile sites, and underestimated Iran’s resilience and ability to bounce back.

The findings also underscore the dilemma Mr. Trump would face if the fragile month-old cease-fire in the conflict collapses and full-scale fighting resumes. The U.S. military has already depleted its stocks of many critical munitions, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot interceptor missiles, and Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, and yet the intelligence suggests that Iran retains considerable military capability, including around the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The passageway carries roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption, and the U.S. Navy now maintains a near-continuous presence transiting and patrolling it. The U.S. military’s Central Command said in a social media post on Sunday that more than 20 American warships were enforcing the blockade against Iran.

If Mr. Trump ordered commanders to launch more strikes to take out or diminish those Iranian capabilities, then the U.S. military would have to dig even deeper into stocks of critical munitions. Doing so would further undercut U.S. stockpiles at a time when the Pentagon and the major arms makers are already struggling to find the industrial capacity to replenish American reserves.

Mr. Trump and his advisers have repeatedly denied that U.S. munitions stocks have been drained to dangerously low levels. In private, Pentagon officials have offered similar assurances to anxious European allies. Those allies have purchased billions of dollars of munitions from the United States on behalf of Ukraine, and they are concerned that those munitions will not be delivered because the U.S. military will need them to replenish its own stocks — a worry that would only intensify if the president orders a return to hostilities with Iran.

In testimony on Tuesday to a House appropriations subcommittee, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We have sufficient munitions for what we’re tasked to do right now.”

The joint assault on Iran by the United States and Israel inflicted considerable damage on Iran’s defenses and damaged or destroyed many strategic sites around the country. Many of Iran’s senior leaders have been killed, and its economy is staggering under the pressures of the war, leaving questions about how long it can sustain its hard line on a negotiated end to the conflict and the halt on nearly all oil tanker traffic and other shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

But Iran’s apparent ability to retain substantial military capacity has exacerbated concerns among U.S. allies about the wisdom of the war and generated criticism among Mr. Trump’s anti-interventionist supporters who opposed getting into the conflict in the first place.

The intelligence assessments on Iran’s capabilities point to the consequences of a tactical choice made by U.S. military commanders.

When American forces struck Iran’s hardened missile facilities, the Pentagon, faced with limited stocks of bunker-busting munitions, opted to try to seal off many of the entrances rather than trying to destroy the entire sites with all of the missiles inside, officials said, with mixed results.

Some bunker busters were dropped on Iran’s underground facilities, but officials said military planners faced a difficult choice and needed to be cautious in using them because they needed to preserve a certain number for U.S. operational plans for potential wars in Asia with North Korea and China.

As The New York Times previously reported, the United States expended roughly 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles in the war — close to the total supply that remains in the American stockpile. The military also fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, roughly 10 times the number the Pentagon procures in a year. And it used more than 1,300 Patriot interceptor missiles during the war, which accounts for more than two years of production at 2025 rates.

Replenishing those stockpiles will take years, not months. Lockheed Martin currently produces around 650 Patriot interceptors a year. The company has announced plans to ramp up production of the crucial air defense weapon to 2,000 a year. But doing so will not be easy. And the industry’s ability to produce rocket motors cannot be scaled up as quickly as Mr. Trump has demanded, officials said.

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the military has everything it needs to carry out its mission. “We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests,” he said in a statement to The Times.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said little publicly about vaccines in recent months, at the behest of a White House worried that his unpopular stance will hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. But he has not abandoned his quest for evidence that they are unsafe.

Working behind the scenes, Mr. Kennedy is spearheading an intense push, across health agencies under his purview, for government scientists and federal data contractors to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease, according to multiple people familiar with the effort.

They said the wide-ranging inquiry is a top priority for Mr. Kennedy, who sees vaccines as a “potential culprit” in various neurological and autoimmune disorders, including asthma and allergies. It resurrects research into a number of ideas Mr. Kennedy has espoused, including whether vaccines are linked to autism and whether thimerosal, a preservative that has largely been removed from vaccines in the United States but remains in some flu shots, is dangerous.

The effort is being led by Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and vaccine safety expert who rose in prominence during the pandemic as a critic of Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates, and is now the health department’s chief science and data officer.

Career scientists at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are conducting the research alongside contractors who provide statistical expertise and access to millions of patient medical records. The initiative was described to The New York Times by six people who are close to it, all of whom insisted on anonymity because it is not public.

The work is raising alarms among some vaccine scholars and critics of Mr. Kennedy, who have long accused the secretary of cherry-picking data and misinterpreting studies to claim that vaccines are unsafe and to limit their use. They fear Mr. Kennedy will use the findings to further erode confidence in vaccines, which the World Health Organization estimates saved 154 million lives over the past half-century.

Mr. Kennedy, who came into office saying he would do nothing to discourage people from getting vaccinated, has already taken steps to scale back the number of vaccines children receive. Public health experts complain that by spending money on issues that have already been thoroughly studied, he is taking funds away from research that might answer the very questions he is asking, including what causes autism.

“It just demonstrates that no matter what the general tone is about vaccines, whether we talk about them or not, the secretary is going to continue to try and look at the data and analyze it in a way that will help support the conclusions that he’s already made,” said Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who oversaw vaccine safety at the C.D.C. until he resigned in August. “And that, to me, is a real problem.”

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for Mr. Kennedy, said in a statement that the effort reflected President Trump’s dedication to advancing “gold-standard vaccine research” that will enable policymakers to “better understand vaccine safety and efficacy and to assess how vaccine exposure, timing and patterns affect health across the life span.”

Mr. Nixon said the work would “inform vaccine recommendations, address critical gaps identified by scientific and medical organizations, including the Institute of Medicine, and strengthen public trust in public health.”

He said the initiative also involved the National Institutes of Health and universities. It remains unclear what the effort will cost and whether it is supplanting other routine government vaccine surveillance.

A former plaintiff’s lawyer, Mr. Kennedy has long said that he wants to build a body of scientific evidence on the harms of vaccines and environmental exposures, which he believes are behind an epidemic of chronic disease. That evidence, he has said, will lay the groundwork for legal action.

“That’s how you really change policy,” Mr. Kennedy said in a podcast as a presidential candidate in 2024. He added, “I’m going to provide that enough science, sufficient science, on each one of these exposures and each one of these injuries, to show who’s causing what and hold them responsible in court.”

During a daylong meeting on the new vaccine research initiative in late February, officials from the Health Department and the C.D.C. gathered to discuss specific studies and methods, including a look at the overall effect of the childhood vaccine schedule. Representatives from major health systems such as Kaiser Permanente were also at the table, given their role in allowing the C.D.C. access to vast troves of data through its Vaccine Safety Datalink system.

As part of the new effort, Mr. Kennedy has tasked some government scientists with studying the health status of vaccinated children compared with those who were not vaccinated. Mr. Kennedy coauthored a book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” calling for such studies, which he believes will prove harm from vaccines.

Researchers say that such comparison studies would be riddled with pitfalls. Vaccinated children are more likely to receive medical care than those who are unvaccinated, and are thus more likely to receive additional medical diagnoses that could be wrongly attributed to vaccines.

Mr. Kennedy is also asking for the group to undertake new studies looking at the link between vaccines and autism.

The project is also looking at the question of harm from thimerosal, a mercury-based vaccine preservative, according to people close to the effort. The preservative has been thoroughly studied and found to be unrelated to autism, but Mr. Kennedy has remained concerned about it, and has rescinded federal recommendations for flu vaccines that contain thimerosal.

Through the C.D.C. alone, the cost of the project is estimated at $40 million to $50 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The project is being overseen by Mr. Kennedy and Stefanie Spear, his closest adviser. Mr. Kennedy’s new senior counselor for public health, Dr. Sara Brenner, a veteran of the F.D.A. who has voiced skepticism of vaccines, is expected to propel the studies forward in her new role, according to people familiar with the plan.

The new vaccine initiative is not the first time the secretary has waged a behind-the-scenes effort to study vaccine safety. Last year, Mr. Kennedy faced significant pushback within federal agencies and from Congress when he deployed David Geier, whose vaccine research is considered deeply flawed, to dig into vaccine safety data to explore some of the secretary’s longstanding concerns.

Mr. Kennedy’s team put pressure on C.D.C. officials, including Dr. Jernigan, who delayed Mr. Geier. When Mr. Kennedy ousted Susan Monarez, the agency’s director, Dr. Jernigan and other C.D.C. leaders quit.

Within the C.D.C. and F.D.A., scientists have registered some relief that Dr. Kulldorff, a pioneer in methods to examine vaccine safety, is leading the new inquiry. He worked on research that was groundbreaking in 2009 to monitor the safety of the H1N1 flu vaccine as it was being rolled out. The team he worked with found a slightly elevated rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune condition associated with some vaccines.

“Martin had been known for decades as a top-notch vaccine safety scientist,” said Daniel Salmon, a Johns Hopkins University vaccine researcher who worked with Dr. Kulldorff on a vaccine data system that predated one the F.D.A. now uses.

Some scientists who worked with Dr. Kulldorff in the past, though, wonder if the evenhanded biostatistician they once knew changed during the pandemic. They point to a federal document, coauthored by Dr. Kulldorff, justifying sharp limitations on vaccines recommended to children in the United States, saying it left out reams of studies supporting flu and hepatitis B vaccines for infants and children.

In 2024, Dr. Kulldorff joined Mr. Kennedy in litigation against Merck, the makers of Gardasil, a vaccine for the human papilloma virus, earning $400 per hour as an expert witness, court records show. Merck, the vaccine’s maker, challenged Dr. Kulldorff’s standing as an expert based on his prior research finding that the vaccine was safe.

The C.D.C. and the F.D.A. already devote considerable effort to investigating vaccine safety, using a number of databases and research methods. But Mr. Kennedy’s fellow vaccine critics, including Retsef Levi, a mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who serves on Mr. Kennedy’s handpicked a panel of C.D.C. vaccine advisers, find fault with the current studies.

“Many of them have serious methodological flaws,” Dr. Levi said.

Mr. Kennedy began raising questions about vaccines’ safety about 20 years ago, and became a champion for mothers of children with autism who blamed the condition on vaccines. People familiar with his thinking say he still feels deeply committed to those women, and cannot reconcile their often heartbreaking stories with the vast body of research that discounts a link.

For parents who believe vaccines have harmed their children, Mr. Kennedy is fulfilling a major promise. Katie Wright, whose 24-year-old son has autism and got to know Mr. Kennedy through her advocacy for parents who question the safety of vaccines, said more research is necessary to restore trust in childhood immunization.

“There’s been tremendous pushback; they say, ‘Well, the research has been done.’ ” Ms. Wright said. “Well, you know what? A lot of families are concerned. I don’t understand the fear of delving deeper into safety research.”

As health secretary, Mr. Kennedy has demonstrated an unorthodox view of what makes for reliable findings about vaccines. He dismissed a major vaccine study of 1.2 million Danish children over 24 years as “a deceitful propaganda stunt,” for failing to highlight a subset of about 50 children who were more likely to have gotten Asperger’s syndrome, a diagnosis previously applied to high-functioning people with autism, after getting vaccines.

In the language of vaccine science, such findings are considered a signal to be examined in more depth. Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a Vanderbilt University expert in vaccinology, said she was concerned that selective attention to such signals could be “used to further erode the confidence that people have in vaccines.”

Mr. Kennedy has also made hasty changes to vaccine policy, often with minimal scientific justification for decision making. Among those pivots was an overhaul in January of vaccine recommendations, reducing the number of immunizations for American children to 10 from 17.

Though the plan was held up in court, Dr. Edwards said it portends a scenario where the findings of the current effort get a big splash in the media or drive new policies before scientists can understand the reasoning.

“What they’ve done is also worrisome,” she said, “because there have been so many things that haven’t been open and transparent.”

Earlier this spring, a mysterious explosion blew up a car carrying an alleged cartel operative in broad daylight on one of Mexico’s busiest highways just outside of its capital city.

Francisco Beltran was killed instantly along with his driver, their bodies found slumped over in their seats after the concentrated blast. Video and pictures of the attack on March 28 show a quick burst of flames with the car continuing to roll forward, drifting off the highway.

Known as “El Payin,” Beltran was accused of being a mid-level member of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most notorious drug trafficking syndicates, Mexican security analysts and sources familiar with his activities said.

Mexican authorities have maintained extreme secrecy around the explosion, but multiple sources tell CNN that the attack was a targeted assassination, facilitated by CIA operations officers. An explosive device had been hidden inside the vehicle, the State of Mexico’s Attorney General told CNN.

The Beltran operation was part of an expanded, and previously unreported, CIA campaign inside Mexico — spearheaded by the agency’s elite and secretive Ground Branch — to dismantle the entrenched cartel networks, those sources as well as two additional people familiar with the campaign told CNN. President Donald Trump has designated several of those groups foreign terrorist organizations and deemed them to be at war with the United States.

Since last year, CIA operatives inside Mexico have directly participated in deadly attacks on several, mostly mid-level cartel members, the sources said. “The lethality of their operations has been seriously ramped up,” said one of the people briefed on the operations. “It’s a significant expansion of the kind of thing the CIA has been willing to do inside Mexico.”

The level of CIA involvement with operations has varied, according to the sources, from more passive intelligence sharing and providing general support to direct participation in assassination operations.

Prior to publication of this story, CNN presented the CIA with details of its reporting. The CIA declined to comment. After publication, CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons released a statement to CNN saying, “This is false and salacious reporting that serves as nothing more than a PR campaign for the cartels and puts American lives at risk,” without specifying what aspect of the reporting is false.

The attack on Beltran was brazen even by the standards of typical Mexican cartel violence, and Mexican analysts debated in the days afterward whether it could signal a worrying, sophisticated new dimension of cartel-on-cartel warfare.

“We have been living in anarchic war for many months in Sinaloa,” Mexican journalist Jose Cardenas said on his television show broadcast by Grupo Fórmula in the days after the attack. “But attacks like this, if confirmed, in an area near the country’s capital, well, I have never heard of anything similar.”

A former CIA paramilitary officer told CNN that knowing how the agency operates, ‘They definitely wanted this incident to create the question in everyone’s mind of, ‘Who did this?’”

The CIA’s involvement in recent operations targeting high-profile cartel figures, like Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, has been well-documented, though much of that activity has publicly been described as intelligence sharing.

But the agency’s covert activity inside Mexico goes far beyond those few cases that attracted international attention and involves much more direct participation, sources told CNN.

The strategy, the sources said, is to dismantle entire cartel networks, which involves not only removing those at the very top but also identifying vulnerabilities throughout the organization and systematically targeting lower-tier players who serve as key cogs in the trafficking enterprise.

Those operations often attract little attention outside of Mexico, or in some cases, beyond even the specific region where they take place because the targets are not as well known. That has typically allowed the CIA’s involvement to remain a secret. The playbook is not much different than counterterrorism missions designed to destroy groups in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world, current and former US national security officials told CNN.

The operations may also be illegal under Mexican law — without the express permission of the federal government, foreign agents are barred from participating in law enforcement operations under the Mexican Constitution.

“It’s not at all clear that all of their missions are coordinated with the [Mexican] government,” said one of the sources.

CNN contacted the office of the Presidency of Mexico and the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs but did not receive comment before publication.

Mexico’s Secretary of Security Omar Garcia Harfuch said in a post on X after publication Tuesday, “The Government of Mexico categorically rejects any version that seeks to normalize, justify, or suggest the existence of lethal, covert, or unilateral operations by foreign agencies on national territory.”

The CIA has also continued to quietly play a key role in non-lethal operations, providing intelligence that helped Mexican forces arrest at least one mid-to-high level cartel figure in recent months, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The exact number of CIA officers operating inside Mexico has fluctuated over the last several months but has typically been a small force, the sources said.

The agency’s presence in Mexico still has room to grow, two of the sources told CNN. They noted that the CIA has not yet deployed the “full ecosystem” of ground branch assets.

The first hints of a clandestine CIA presence in Mexico burst into public view late last month, when two US embassy officials who were also CIA operatives were killed in a car accident in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Hours before, they and two additional CIA operatives had taken part in a raid on a meth lab that was led by the director of Chihuahua’s State Investigation Agency, sources told CNN.

All four of the CIA operatives, who’d been dressed in plain clothes and kept their faces partially covered, were members of Ground Branch, the sources said — and Mexico’s federal government said afterward that it hadn’t authorized them to be there.

The administration has been putting the pieces in place for an expanded and more lethal CIA presence in Mexico since the earliest days of Trump’s second term, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe focused on expanding the agency’s role in counter-cartel missions and related covert operations since he was tapped for the job, a source familiar with his efforts previously told CNN.

Trump designated major Mexican cartels, including Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Nueva Familia Michoacána, as foreign terrorist organizations shortly after taking office, which provided legal cover for some additional US intelligence authorities. The CIA then began reviewing its legal options to use lethal force against cartels in Mexico and beyond, CNN has reported, and also began increasing the number of surveillance drones it was flying over Mexico.

Around the same time, Ron Johnson, a former CIA paramilitary officer, was confirmed as the US’ new ambassador to Mexico, putting an official with deep US intelligence experience in a key position to interact with Mexican authorities.

“He’s been integral to this whole effort,” said the former CIA officer, who remains in touch with ex-colleagues inside the agency.

A State Department spokesperson said, “Ambassador Johnson coordinates US collaboration with Mexican authorities in this joint effort.”

“The United States and Mexico continue to take decisive bilateral action to disrupt and dismantle the transnational cartels that threaten communities on both sides of the border,” the spokesman added.

The CIA’s ground presence and operations in Mexico then escalated late last year, after Trump formally updated and expanded the agency’s authorities to conduct lethal targeting and carry out covert action in Latin America, the sources said. Trump indicated in a speech last week that a “land force” was already in place in Mexico to eliminate traffickers but didn’t elaborate on the nature of the force.

“Drugs coming in [to the US] by sea are down 97%,” he said, praising the US military’s lethal campaign against suspected drug traffickers operating in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, although the source of the number he provided was unclear. “And now we’ve started the land force, which is much easier. And you’ll hear some complaints from …representatives from Mexico and other places. But if they’re not going to do the job, then we’re going to do the job. And they understand that.”

In a document released publicly this week outlining its counterterrorism strategy, the Trump administration said the “neutralization” of cartels in the Western Hemisphere is its “first” priority, adding that the US will continue targeting designated cartels abroad even if it means acting unilaterally.

“We will do so in concert with local governments when they are willing and able to work with us,” the document says. “If they cannot, or will not, we will still take whatever action is necessary to protect our country, especially if the government in question is complicit with the cartels.”

The CIA operations in Mexico are high risk, inviting possible retaliation from cartel members who frequently cross the US-Mexico border, the sources said.

“There is definitely concern this could easily spill over into the US,” the former CIA official noted.

While multiple sources acknowledged that not everyone in the Mexican government is briefed on every operation — sometimes by design to maintain deniability — they also stressed that the CIA tends not to conduct operations unilaterally.

“They’re going to be pushing the envelope,” a former senior US official said. “I think it’s dangerous. You have to watch your back for everything.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she was not told beforehand about the CIA’s participation in the meth lab operation in Chihuahua and appeared furious in the aftermath.

“There cannot be agents from any US government institution operating in the Mexican field,” she said at a news conference after the incident became public.

Under a national security law passed in Mexico in 2020, all foreign agents are required to disclose their whereabouts to the federal government and deliver monthly reports about their activities, and Sheinbaum suggested the CIA’s presence in Chihuahua may have violated that law.

“Let us hope this is an exceptional case,” Sheinbaum said. “And that a situation like this never happens again.”

José Luis Valdés Ugalde, a senior researcher and professor at the Center for Research on North America from National Autonomous University of Mexico, told CNN that Mexico’s federal government is acutely aware of the CIA’s presence in the country, but it hasn’t decided how aggressively to try to control what the agency is doing there, or how transparent to be about it to the public.

Broadly, the Chihuahua incident “says a lot about the distrust that the United States has of the [Mexican] federal government,” Ugalde said.

“The fact that it was done on the side, through the Chihuahua state government, without the need to involve the federal Government, speaks to the very bad relationship Mexico has with the United States in terms of the intelligence groups that participate or do not participate in Mexican operations against the cartels.”

Sheinbaum is walking a delicate political tightrope. Trump has threatened to deploy the US military to Mexico if her government doesn’t do more to rein in the cartels, which he has previously accused of working directly with Mexican officials. Turning a blind eye to covert CIA operations inside Mexico aimed at eliminating traffickers could keep Trump happy and forestall the prospect of an overt US military operation, the sources said.

For example, after Mexican special forces killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, “El Mencho,” in an operation in Jalisco in February, the Mexican government acknowledged that CIA intelligence had been instrumental in locating him, but Sheinbaum said there was “absolutely no involvement of US forces” in the operation.

The word “involvement” leaves some wiggle room, sources said. While CIA operations officers did not pull the trigger, they were in the area during the operation providing the Mexicans with real time intelligence, support and equipment.

When suspected cartel members unleashed a wave of violence in response to El Mencho’s death — torching buses and businesses while clashing with Mexican security forces — US officials were caught off guard and forced to scramble to try to ensure the safety of US operatives, according to a US official briefed on the matter. Administration officials worked to try to evacuate FBI and CIA personnel operating from locations that were at the center of fire-bombings and open-air shooting incidents, the official said.

In previous administration, US operations inside Mexico were mostly coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has spent decades building relationships training with vetted units in the Mexican Naval Marines known as SEMAR, current and former officials say.

In a nation with major corruption problems in law enforcement, known to be infiltrated by cartel operatives, working directly with vetted Mexican security forces has helped not only protect sensitive intelligence for anti-cartel operations, but also protect the lives of US and Mexican forces working together to help capture cartel leaders.

But the CIA has over the last several months been purposefully working more closely with select regional, state, and local Mexican officials than they ever have in the past, primarily due to the agency’s concerns that the cartels have effectively infiltrated some elements of the Mexican government.

Further underscoring distrust between US and Mexican authorities, the US Justice Department last month accused the sitting governor of Sinaloa , who is a member of Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena political party, and nine other current and former Mexican officials of actively conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel.

An incident that occurred in 2012 continues to serve as a warning for the CIA. In August of that year, more than a dozen Mexican federal police officers, wearing civilian clothes, ambushed a US Embassy armored vehicle with diplomatic plates that was carrying two CIA operatives and their driver, a Mexican marine. US officials suspected at the time that the attack was an assassination attempt done at the behest of a cartel. Twelve of the police officers were convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to decades in prison.

“Ground Branch is very good at not getting killed by the guys they work with,” the former CIA paramilitary officer said. “But the one place we really worry about getting whacked is Mexico. The Mexican military and police are infiltrated by the cartels. And the attack in 2012 still affects the way the agency looks at the situation there now.”

The Russian drones slammed into the American-owned warehouses one after another.

Each announced its arrival with an eerie whine. Then came the blasts, ripping through a vast grain terminal in southern Ukraine and lighting up the night sky.

Seven drones in three minutes. The target, according to a video of the mid-April attack recorded by a truck driver, was the U.S. farming giant Cargill.

“This is insane,” the driver is heard repeating in the video, which was obtained and verified by The New York Times. “This is insane.”

The attack was one of the latest in a series of Russian strikes on major American companies since last summer, including facilities tied to Coca-Cola, Boeing, the snacks maker Mondelez and the tobacco giant Philip Morris.

The corporations have largely avoided publicizing the strikes, wary of alarming investors and insurers. While Ukraine has disclosed several attacks on American assets, the strikes on Cargill and Coca-Cola have not been previously reported.

Russia’s motivation for striking U.S. companies is unclear. Some Ukrainian business figures say the attacks are part of a broader campaign targeting all types of assets, regardless of companies’ nationality, aimed at choking off the country’s economy. Others see a more focused goal: to deter U.S. investment just as Kyiv is trying to deepen business ties with a deal-making White House.

The companies have quietly raised concerns with U.S. officials about what they see as a deliberate and escalating campaign against American business interests in Ukraine. The White House, despite its pledge to defend U.S. commercial interests abroad, has been muted in its response.

The Trump administration has not condemned any of the attacks that Ukraine has made public this year. After U.S. diplomats in Kyiv and Ukrainian business figures and officials warned about the attacks, the administration offered a response that amounted to little more than an acknowledgment of the concerns, according to three people familiar with the exchanges, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters.

At the same time, Washington has told Kyiv to refrain from hitting a Russian Black Sea oil terminal that exports oil from Kazakh fields in which U.S. companies have stakes, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Olga Stefanishyna.

The contrast has fueled accusations of a double standard in the Trump administration’s handling of the war. It follows President Trump’s repeated pressure on Ukraine to accept unfavorable terms to end the war, while overlooking Moscow’s refusal to make concessions.

A State Department spokesperson said Washington had “urged both sides to refrain from targeting U.S. business interests.” A White House spokeswoman did not respond to questions, saying only that Mr. Trump and his team “are working very hard to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.”

The companies mentioned in this article either did not respond to questions or issued brief statements saying they continued to operate in Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

In February, representatives of several American companies, including Coca-Cola, Cargill and Bunge, another farming giant, spoke with a bipartisan group of U.S. senators who were visiting Ukraine.

“Listening to several of them, they said they believed they were being intentionally struck,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview.

Andy Hunder, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, which represents U.S. companies operating there, said that the Russians “are sending these missiles and drones with the hope that they will stop American business coming into Ukraine.”

U.S. businesses’ footprint in Ukraine is modest, roughly 120 companies. Still, big consumer brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola operate there, as do all the major U.S. grain traders.

Many companies took losses in the opening weeks of Russia’s 2022 invasion. In Velyka Dymerka, a town on Kyiv’s outskirts, Russian soldiers plundered a bottling plant partly owned by Coca-Cola, taking, among other things, bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, said Oleksandr Borsuk, the town’s mayor. After the soldiers were seen in a drunken celebration in the streets, residents joked that the whiskey had helped stall the Russian advance.

The bottling plant resumed operations in May 2022, after the Russian troops were pushed back. For the next three years, it operated without incident, in line with most U.S. firms in Ukraine.

“I don’t recall Russia specifically targeting U.S. businesses in Ukraine before 2025,” said Jim O’Brien, who served as United States assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs from late 2023 until January 2025, when Mr. Trump returned to power.

That changed last summer.

In mid-June, a strike damaged a Boeing facility in Kyiv. Two months later, Russian cruise missiles slammed into a factory run by Flex Ltd., an American electronics manufacturer. That plant is in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles from the front.

The attack on Flex shocked the U.S. business community in Ukraine. Mr. Hunder called on Mr. Trump “to stand with American business in Ukraine” and “show Putin that the United States protects its own.” Mr. Trump told reporters he was “not happy” about the attack.

Russia continued to strike regardless.

Perhaps the most symbolic attack targeted the Coca-Cola bottling plant. The factory, surrounded by farmland, is hard to miss. Two water towers at its entrance are painted red and stamped with the firm’s name in its signature white script.

Late last year, a Russian drone hit the plant, according to Mr. Borsuk, the mayor. A few months later, another drone was shot down by Ukrainian air defenses as it approached the plant, while a third later struck a solar farm adjacent to it, Mr. Borsuk added.

Russia has repeatedly targeted energy facilities during the war but has mostly avoided solar installations, which are easy to repair and generate limited power.

To Mr. Borsuk, the attacks left little doubt: “They were aiming at Coca-Cola.”

As the war entered 2026, the attacks only intensified.

In just four weeks, facilities owned by Bunge, Philip Morris and Mondelez were struck, an escalation that has coincided with a broader rise in Russian air attacks against a range of targets that has also included Ukrainian and European firms.

Still, several Ukrainian business figures noted that the strikes on U.S. firms intensified just as Ukraine began to deepen economic ties with the United States last year.

Last spring, Kyiv and Washington signed a sweeping agreement giving the United States preferential access to investment in Ukraine’s energy sector. In January, the Ukrainian government awarded a contract to mine a major state-owned lithium deposit to a billionaire friend of Mr. Trump and a company partly owned by the U.S. government.

The strikes are meant to undercut this business-led approach “by making American factories, warehouses and offices look like an unacceptable risk,” said Oleksandr Romanishyn, a former deputy economy minister who now works on projects to develop U.S.-Ukraine business ties.

Raising alarms about the attacks has proved to be a delicate matter.

Some publicly traded companies refuse to acknowledge the attacks, fearing they could spook shareholders. Some still operate in Russia despite the war, further muddying the picture. And while Ukraine has disclosed some of the strikes, it has not made them a point of emphasis, wary of reinforcing its image as a risky place to do business.

Mr. Hunder got some traction with the bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including Ms. Shaheen, who visited Ukraine in mid-February. The lawmakers were briefed about the attacks and issued statements voicing shock and concern.

Ms. Shaheen later signed a bipartisan Senate resolution that denounced “the specific targeting of American companies operating inside Ukraine to try and discourage American investment.”

The Trump administration’s response, however, “has been silence — nothing,” Ms. Shaheen said. It did not publicly react to the strikes on Bunge, Mondelez and Philip Morris, which were all disclosed by Ukraine.

Mr. Romanishyn, the former Ukrainian deputy economy minister, said the American response mattered not just for Ukraine but also for the United States itself.

Either Washington sends a credible signal that American businesses will be protected, he said, “or it quietly accepts a precedent that other authoritarian regimes will study very carefully: that you can attack U.S.-linked companies abroad and face only rhetorical concern.”

President Trump is meeting with his national security team Monday to discuss the way forward in the Iran war, including possibly resuming military action, after negotiations with the country deadlocked on Sunday, three U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials say Trump wants a deal to end the war, but Iran's rejection of many of his demands and refusal to make meaningful concessions on its nuclear program puts the military option back on the table.

Trump publicly threatened several times in recent days to bomb infrastructure facilities in Iran if diplomacy failed.

The U.S. waited 10 days for Iran's response to its draft proposal for ending the war. The White House was optimistic that Iran's positions would show further progress toward a deal.

But the Iranian response that arrived on Sunday was not positive. Iran's state TV reported that Tehran has rejected the U.S. proposal, which it said "meant Iran's surrender to Trump's excessive demands."

Trump rejected Iran's response on Sunday. "I don't like it. It is inappropriate," he told Axios.

Vice President Vance, White House envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, CIA director John Ratcliffe and other senior officials are expected to participate in the Iran meeting on Monday, U.S. officials say.

"I have a plan. Iran can't have a nuclear weapon," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Monday before the meeting.

"The ceasefire with Iran is on massive life support," Trump added.

Trump said Iran had agreed to relinquish its stockpile of enriched uranium to the U.S. But he said the Iranians apparently reversed course because their response Sunday omitted any mention of the issue.

Trump said the Iranian leadership is divided between "moderates and lunatics."

Two U.S. officials said Trump is leaning toward taking some form of military action against Iran to increase pressure on the regime and force concessions on its nuclear program.

"He will tune them up a bit," one U.S. official said.

"I think we all know where this is going," a second U.S. official said.

One option Trump is considering is resuming "Project Freedom," the U.S. operation to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which was suspended last week.

Another option is to resume the bombing campaign and strike the 25% of targets the U.S. military identified but hasn't hit yet.

The Israeli government wants Trump to order a special forces operation to secure Iran's enriched uranium stockpile. Israeli officials say Trump is hesitant to order such an operation because it is highly risky.

One consideration for Trump as he weighs next steps in the war is his trip to China this week.

The president is expected to leave Wednesday and return Friday. Two U.S. officials said they don't think Trump would order military action against Iran before he returns from China.

U.S. officials say Trump is expected to discuss the Iran war with Chinese President Xi Jinping. China has been urging Iran to reach a deal with the U.S. on ending the war and curbing its nuclear program, so far with no success.

The United Arab Emirates has carried out military strikes on Iran, people familiar with the matter said, casting the Gulf monarchy as an active combatant in a war in which it has been Iran’s biggest target.

Its military is well-equipped with Western-made jet fighters and surveillance networks. And the attacks suggest the country is now more willing to use them to protect its economic power and growing influence across the Middle East.

The strikes, which the U.A.E. hasn’t publicly acknowledged, have included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, the people familiar with the matter said. That attack took place in early April around the time President Trump was announcing a cease-fire in the war after a five-week air campaign and sparked a large fire and knocked much of its capacity off line for months.

Iran said at the time that the refinery had been struck in an enemy attack and launched a barrage of missile and drone strikes against the U.A.E. and Kuwait in response.

The U.S. wasn’t upset by the attack, as the cease-fire hadn’t yet settled into place, and it has quietly welcomed the participation of the U.A.E. and any other Gulf states that want to join in the fight, one of the people said.

The U.A.E.’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the strikes but pointed to previous statements in which it asserted its right to respond—including militarily—to hostile acts.

The Pentagon declined to comment. The White House didn’t address questions about the U.A.E.’s involvement during the war but said that President Trump has every option at his disposal, and that the U.S. has maximum leverage over the Iranian regime.

“It’s significant to have a Gulf Arab country as a warring party that struck Iran directly,” said Dina Esfandiary, Middle East analyst and author of a book on the rise of the U.A.E. “Tehran will now aim to further drive a wedge between the U.A.E. and other Gulf Arabs who are trying to mediate an end to the war.”

Gulf countries said ahead of the war they wouldn’t let their airspace or bases be used for attacks. But once the war started, Iran responded by launching missile and drone attacks against Gulf population centers, energy infrastructure and airports in an effort to raise the economic and political costs and make it harder for the U.S. and Israel to continue the attack.

Iran focused much of its fire on the U.A.E., targeting it with more than 2,800 missiles and drones—far more than any other country, including Israel.

The attacks have hammered the U.A.E.’s air traffic, tourism and property market, and have led to a wave of furloughs and layoffs. They also have prompted a fundamental shift in the country’s strategic outlook to one that now sees Iran as a rogue actor bent on undermining the country’s economic and social model based on expatriate talent and a reputation for safety and stability, Gulf officials have said.

The U.A.E. has since emerged as the most openly confrontational country in the Gulf and has maintained strong military cooperation with the U.S. throughout the war, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The Emiratis made it clear early on that they didn’t want this war, but it’s also clear that since the first Iranian strikes on the U.A.E. took place, Abu Dhabi’s been quite transparent that they see the regional picture as having changed dramatically,” said H.A. Hellyer, senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London. “Abu Dhabi hasn’t confirmed what they have targeted, or even if they have targeted, but from the early days of the war it seemed only a matter of time before we saw increased kinetic involvement of different Gulf states in the war.”

Speculation about the U.A.E.’s involvement in the war has swirled since mid-March, when a jet fighter that didn’t appear to belong to Israel or the U.S. was filmed over Iran.

Researchers who track publicly available images and other information have pointed to photos purporting to show French Mirage fighters and Chinese Wing Loong drones—both used by the U.A.E.—in action in Iran.

Militarily, the U.A.E. is dwarfed by the U.S. But it has a highly trained and capable air force with Mirages and a fleet of advanced F-16 jet fighters supported by refueling planes, command and control aircraft and surveillance drones.

Those capabilities give it unusually sophisticated air power for the region, according to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, who planned the air campaign for Desert Storm.

“They are very strong in terms of precision strike, air defense, airborne surveillance, refueling, and logistics,” Deptula said. “If you have that capable of an air force, why would you sit back and absorb attacks from Iran without responding?”

Tehran’s strategy of pulling the Gulf into the war has exacerbated political divisions among its Arab monarchies and sent them scrambling for new arrangements that might guarantee their security.

While all Gulf states are wrestling with growing security risks and the reliability of their American protector, the Emirates is doubling down on its relationship with the U.S., Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates president, told a group of reporters in April.

In addition to the strikes, the U.A.E. backed drafts of a resolution at the United Nations that authorized the use of force if necessary to break Iran’s chokehold on the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway.

The U.A.E. also acted against Iran’s financial interests, closing schools and clubs in Dubai that were linked to Tehran and denying visas and transit rights to Iranian citizens. The moves crimped the economic lifeline the Emirates have long provided to Iran amid heavy sanctions by the West.

Iran has responded by repeatedly accusing the U.A.E. of joining the U.S. and Israeli campaign.

After the U.S. and Israel wiped out Tehran’s air-defense capabilities, the risk of flying combat missions over the country dropped sharply, said retired Col. John “JV” Venable, who commanded operations at the Al Udeid air base in Qatar during his time in the U.S. Air Force.

“If you’re an ally and you want to be engaged, it’s a really good time to do that, because the threat is really low,” Venable said. “At medium to high altitude, aircraft are going to be able to do what they want, and there’s nothing the Iranians can do about it.”

As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Tehran and Washington, it quietly allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfields, potentially shielding them from American airstrikes, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

Iran also sent civilian aircraft to park in neighboring Afghanistan. It was not clear if military aircraft were among those flights, two of the officials told CBS News.

Together, the movements reflected an apparent effort to insulate some of Iran's remaining military and aviation assets from the expanding conflict, even as officials publicly served as brokers for de-escalation.

The U.S. officials, who all spoke only under condition of anonymity to discuss national security issues, told CBS News that days after President Trump announced the ceasefire with Iran in early April, Tehran sent multiple aircraft to Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Khan, a strategically important military installation located just outside the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Among the military hardware was an Iranian Air Force RC-130, a reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering variant of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules tactical transport aircraft.

U.S. Central Command referred CBS News to Afghan and Pakistani officials for comment.

A senior Pakistan official rejected the claims involving Nur Khan Air Base, telling CBS News, that "Nur Khan base is right in the heart of [the] city, a large fleet of aircrafts parked there can't be hidden from [the] public eye."

According to an Afghan civil aviation officer who spoke to CBS News, an Iranian civilian aircraft belonging to Mahan Air landed in Kabul shortly before the war started. After Iranian airspace was closed, the aircraft remained parked in Kabul airport.

Later, when Pakistan began airstrikes on Kabul in March during tensions with the Taliban-led government over allegations that the Afghan Taliban was offering a safe haven for the jihadist militant group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Taliban's civil aviation authorities decided to move the aircraft to Herat Airport near the Iranian border for safety reasons, to protect it from possible bombing of Kabul Airport by Pakistani jets.

According to the aviation officer, this was the only Iranian aircraft left in Afghanistan.

Taliban's chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied the presence of any Iranian airplanes in Afghanistan, telling CBS News, "No, that's not true and Iran doesn't need to do that."

Pakistan's reliance on China for military assistance has risen dramatically over the past decade. A Stockholm International Peace Research Institute study showed China supplied about 80% of Pakistan's major arms between 2020 and 2024, and Islamabad also has close economic ties with Beijing.

Islamabad has attempted to navigate both sides of the crisis — presenting itself to Washington as a stabilizing intermediary while avoiding steps that could alienate Tehran or China, Iran's most powerful international backer.

China, which has deepened military and economic cooperation with both Pakistan and Iran in recent years, has publicly celebrated Pakistan's role in facilitating indirect communications between Tehran and Washington.

Iran's latest proposal to end the war included demands for U.S. war reparations, recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and the removal of American sanctions, according to Iran's state-run broadcaster.

The conditions were disclosed in a social media post by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting a day after Mr. Trump publicly rejected Tehran's counteroffer as "TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE." The president did not specify which elements of Iran's proposal prompted his rejection.

The rejection has further strained what seems to be a ceasefire in name only as Mr. Trump prepares to travel to Beijing this week for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where the war in Iran is expected to feature prominently alongside disputes over trade and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, small-scale clashes continued around the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, underscoring the fragility of the ceasefire between Iran and the United States.

The United Arab Emirates said Sunday that Iranian drones again targeted its territory following several strikes earlier in the week, according to Reuters. Last week, CBS News reported that three American Navy destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz came under attack, with the U.S. carrying out strikes on two Iranian ports abutting the strait.