Trump says the United States "will attack" Iran, the UN worries about a return to war

Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States was “going to attack” Iran, accusing it of “making fun” of his country, with the UN Secretary General warning against the return of a “total war” in the Middle East.

“We are going to attack them, attack them very hard,” declared the American president to the press in the Oval Office. “We were really close to reaching an agreement, but they keep leading us on, they make fun of us,” he added.

On the eve of the kick-off of a football World Cup where the Iranian selection will play on American soil, he had earlier in the day accused Iran of having “taken too long” to negotiate an agreement, for which it will have to “pay the price”.

On Tuesday, however, he announced a “very, very good agreement” to come within “two to three days”, but in the meantime new exchanges of fire took place early on Wednesday.

Diplomacy “is undermined by the use of force”, declared the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, denouncing the “repeated violations of the ceasefire” concluded on April 8, on the part of the United States.

Iran had just claimed attacks against American bases in Bahrain and Jordan in response to American strikes on its soil, themselves triggered by the destruction on Monday of an American helicopter attributed to Tehran.

In Kuwait, the army claimed to be facing “hostile air targets” without specifying their origin. The authorities in Bahrain said they had intercepted several attacks, while the Jordanian army claimed to have destroyed five missiles which targeted the town of Azraq, where an American base is located.

The United States also announced that it had disabled an oil tanker that attempted to violate its blockade of Iranian ports.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres deplored “the escalation of attacks and rhetoric in the last 48 hours” and warned against a slide towards “total war” in the Gulf.

Negotiators from Qatar, a country among the mediators between Washington and Tehran, however went to the Iranian capital on Wednesday, a diplomat familiar with the discussions told AFP.

– Pétrolier attaqué –

The American strikes in retaliation for the attack on the helicopter – which flew over the Strait of Hormuz still blocked by Iran – notably targeted the towns of Jask and Sirik and the island of Qeshm, on the southern coast of Iran, during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.

And in New Delhi, the government announced Wednesday that three Indian sailors were missing and 21 others had been rescued after the attack on a commercial ship, the Settebello, off the coast of Oman.

The British maritime security company Vanguard had indicated earlier that the Settebello, an oil tanker flying the flag of Palau, had “transmitted a distress call indicating that its engine room had been hit by a missile”.

On the nuclear issue, one of the main points of contention between Tehran and Washington, the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) approved in Vienna a resolution summoning Iran to provide “all of its information” on “the inventory of its nuclear materials”.

The adoption of the text is “counterproductive in the current context” and “further complicates an already volatile situation”, reacted to AFP the permanent representative of Iran to the United Nations in Vienna.

Western countries and Israel suspect Tehran of wanting to acquire nuclear weapons, which Iran refutes. The fate of more than 400 kg of highly enriched uranium, last seen on June 10, 2025 by IAEA inspectors, remains uncertain to this day.

– UN Mission in Lebanon –

Iran and Israel, for their part, carried out reciprocal attacks on Sunday and Monday, for the first time since the fragile ceasefire between Tehran and Washington came into force.

Tehran, which struck first in response to Israeli bombings on Beirut, demands that Lebanon, where its ally Hezbollah and Israel have been fighting since March 2, be included in any agreement to end the war in the Middle East, which began at the end February by an Israeli-American attack against Iran.

More than 3,600 people have been killed in Lebanon in Israeli strikes since the start of the war. On Wednesday, the UN announced it was sending a mission to the country to investigate human rights violations.

On site, at least 12 people were killed Wednesday in Israeli strikes on two towns in the Tire region according to a medical source.

The Israeli army also announced on Wednesday that it had brought two men apprehended in southern Lebanon to Israel for questioning.