Iran War Updates: Trump accuses Iran of making up fake strikes on ships to drive up oil prices

The U.S. Central Command posted a celebration Thursday of 100 days of its reinstated blockade on Iranian ships entering or exiting ports through the Strait of Hormuz.

The blockade has prevented $25 billion in crude oil exports by Iran, according to CENTCOM.

The blockade was reinstated on July 14 after the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding fell apart over the wording of one of the clauses. Iran believed it would determine navigation through the strait and withhold charging fees for at least 60 days. The U.S. said the wording in the memorandum did not allow for Iran to determine transit.

Iran began targeting ships in the strait again and the U.S. reinstituted its blockade that initially ran from April 13 to June 18. The initial blockade redirected at least 140 ships attempting to transit the strait. The new one had redirected 138 ships as of the last U.S. update on Oct. 17.

"There have been no exports or imports to Iran by sea except for the humanitarian aid U.S. forces have allowed," the post added.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio thanked Qatar's prime minister and foreign minister for the country's help in the region in a call on Thursday.

Rubio "reaffirmed the United States' commitment to Qatar's security and freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz." 

"The Secretary also expressed appreciation for Qatar's continued mediation efforts and strong and close partnership in promoting a more secure region," the State Department said.

In a readout from the Qatari side, they said the two sides discussed de-escalating tensions, while confirming it supported "endeavors aimed at reaching a solution that ensures freedom of maritime navigation and paves the way for a comprehensive agreement that achieves lasting peace in the region."

Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia are having only a "limited" economic impact on the kingdom so far, owing to robust domestic demand, the International Monetary Fund's regional director told AFP, though geopolitical uncertainty remains a threat.

The Iranian-backed Yemeni group has ramped up its attacks on Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, hitting oil facilities and airports among other targets, as Yemen's dormant civil war has roared back into life.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, has had its crude shipments squeezed by Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the Houthis' declaration of a maritime blockade.

But shipments continue to move despite the conflicts, Jihad Azour, the regional director, told AFP.

The Gulf kingdom also has "strong internal demand and a robust public sector, so the impact is limited," he said of the Houthi attacks.

Nevertheless, the economy is expected to contract by 3.3% this year, owing to the impacts of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran that began in February. The economy of the region as a whole is expected to shrink 4.8% in 2026, the IMF said.

As oil prices crept up to their highest levels since May, President Trump accused Iran of lying about the situation in the Strait of Hormuz in order to drive up costs.

"Iran is doing everything they can to drive up the price of Oil prior to the U.S. Midterm Election," Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. "They are even making up fake hits, mines, and everything else, because more Oil is coming through the Hormuz Strait now than it did even prior to the beginning of the Conflict."

The price for Brent crude, the international standard for oil, reached $112 a barrel on Thursday morning. The cost hadn't reached at least $112 since May 18. 

Iran announced they had struck four vessels in the area of the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, while three others hit sea mines. All of the damaged ships were along the southern route, hugging the Omani coast, used by the U.S. to escort tankers out of the Persian Gulf, according to Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

While the U.S. is escorting large amounts of oil out of the Gulf, it is a costly process. Overall instability in the region is also continuing to keep prices high despite increased supply since the early weeks of the war.

Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said the group's armed forces have carried out four military operations against targets inside Saudi Arabia in the last 48 hours, including on the Defense Ministry building in Riyadh, the King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, an Aramco facility in Yanbu and Abha International Airport.

In a video statement published on his X account, Saree claimed the attacks were carried out using ballistic missiles and drones, with direct hits on all four targets.

"The criminal Saudi enemy has carried out, during its aggression and latest escalation over the past 100 days, more than 2,900 airstrikes and missile attacks targeting civilian objects in our beloved country," he said. "Through these attacks, it has committed dozens of crimes, leaving more than 562 people killed and wounded, the majority of them women and children."

CBS News has not independently verified the claims.

The Houthis "will continue their operations deep inside Saudi Arabia in defence of our country and our people," he added.

Anti-American propaganda is a common sight on the streets of the Iranian capital, but authorities have gone a step further with their latest effort – a life-size jail cell with an actor playing President Trump languishing inside.

The 3D art installation is proving a hit with locals, who have been stopping to take selfies as well as hurl abuse at the pseudo-Trump.

Since the ongoing war began with joint American and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, Iran has ramped up its propaganda operations. In the new campaign, a mock-prison cell is suspended several stories high over Tajrish Square, in an upscale neighborhood of north Tehran.

The actor, wearing a prosthetic mask to look like Mr. Trump, paces around the cell or clutches its bars. A screen set up nearby shows messages denouncing alleged U.S. war crimes.

Tehran's municipal authorities, which are behind the campaign, have said the objective is to remind the capital's residents of Iran's demands for justice.

CBS/AFP

The Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of Yemen's government in the neighboring country's spiraling civil war said Thursday that four more drones were intercepted over the capital and the hold city of Medina. 

The force did not attribute the attacks to anyone, but the drones were likely launched by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have peppered Saudi Arabia with deadly strikes in recent weeks, with many projectiles getting through the kingdom's defenses.

Earlier Thursday the Saudi coalition said it had intercepted and destroyed one drone over Riyadh, again without saying where it had come from.

The Houthis have repeatedly denied targeting Medina or Mecca, the two holiest cities in Islam.

The shadow fleet of tankers holding Iran's offshore oil reserves, which it had been selling to China throughout the war against the U.S. and Israel, have run dry, intelligence firm Kpler told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

The millions of barrels of crude, held on dozens of oil tankers in Asian water, ran out in mid-October, Kpler told the outlet, with a U.S. naval blockade preventing Iran from replacing the crude being sold to Chinese refineries.

"There's no more oil to discharge to China anymore," said Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude-oil analysis at the firm.

The U.S. naval blockade has cost Iran at least $25 billion in oil revenue, according to U.S. Central Command.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on Thursday said all options must be explored to find a political solution between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

At a press conference where he reiterated solidarity with Saudi Arabia, he stressed "the necessity of exploring all avenues for reaching political solutions."

The conflict between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the Iran-backed Houthis erupted in summer and has drastically escalated in recent weeks.

Egypt announced Sunday that it was prepared to provide military assistance to Saudi Arabia. 

CBS/AFP

A spokesman for Yemen's Houthi rebels accused Saudi Arabia on Thursday of targeting an Indian yacht near Zuqar Island in the Red Sea with 14 Indian nationals on board.

In a statement published on X, Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said the group's forces were carrying out rescue operations and would provide further information later.

"The Saudi enemy targets an Indian yacht near Zuqar Island, with 14 people of Indian nationality on board, according to preliminary information," he wrote in his post.

"This reckless act by the Saudi enemy in targeting the yacht threatens international navigation in the Red Sea, and the international community must stop the Saudi enemy from these reckless actions," said Saree.

There was no further information or other reports available to corroborate the Houthis' claim.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Army, Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami, said Thursday that the country's armed forces were prepared for asymmetric warfare and satisfied with their drone capacity.

"In the previous asymmetric war, we fought the enemy with equipment that surprised them, as they received very heavy blows," he said, referring to the intense exchange of fire with the U.S. and Israel before a June ceasefire was announced. That deal, which President Trump soon declared over, failed to bring about the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program and many other issues that it provisioned, but neither side has engaged in major strikes since the summer, with fighting in the region largely shifting to the linked conflict in Yemen.

"We have reached a good level of maturity in the field of drones and unmanned systems," Hatami said. "We assure our dear people of Iran that we are in a good position."

Top European diplomats will hold talks in Istanbul Friday with their counterparts from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt during a meeting initiated by Ankara, a Turkish foreign ministry source told the AFP news agency on Thursday.

Foreign ministers from the so-called E3 group – Britain, France and Germany – will meet counterparts from the newly created R4 group to discuss the Palestinian issue, developments in Yemen and the Strait of Hormuz and ways to end the Russia-Ukraine war, the source said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will host the meeting, the first to bring together the two groups.

"The seven countries will come together for the first time in the R4+E3 format, at Turkey's initiative," the source said, indicating they would explore "opportunities for cooperation and coordination that could be put into practice ... in the coming period."

In chairing the meeting, Fidan was expected to focus on the international community "increasing pressure on Israel" in response to its settlement expansion and its "encouragement of settler terrorism," the source AFP.

Fidan will also underline support for Saudi Arabia's security in the face of attacks by Yemen's Houthis, and stress the need for permanent freedom of navigation in the Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb Straits. 

CBS/AFP

Saudi Arabia's state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil company, told staff to evacuate the company's headquarters in the eastern city of Dhahran and to work remotely, the Reuters news agency reported Thursday, citing six sources with knowledge of the matter.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have hit the kingdom repeatedly with missile and drone attacks in recent weeks.

Last week a missile struck an Aramco building in Dhahran, which is on Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf coast. The strike caused a "limited fire" at Saudi Aramco's headquarters complex, the kingdom's energy ministry said at the time.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen's escalating civil war said Thursday that it had intercepted another drone over the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Coalition spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki confirmed the interception in a social media post, without offering further details.

Saudi Arabia has been pummeled by Houthi strikes in recent weeks. Experts say geography, missile interceptor shortages and evolving Houthi tactics are helping the Iranian proxy menace the kingdom, and global energy supplies.

World shares and U.S. futures retreated Thursday as oil prices jumped more than 2% following a report by Iran's state television that seven oil tankers were hit by its military or sea mines and damaged near the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

If the claim by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is verified, it would be the largest number of vessels damaged in the Gulf in a single day since the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28.

Brent crude, the international standard, gained 3.2% to hit $112.27 per barrel Thursday. It has been bouncing around $110 in recent days amid uncertainty about when the war with Iran might ease to allow the global energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz to return to normal.

U.S. benchmark crude rose 2.8% to $99.80 per barrel.

In early European trading, Germany's DAX shed 1.1% to 25,367.96, while the CAC 40 in Paris declined 1.3% to 7,816.67. Britain's FTSE 100 was down 0.7% at 10,678.67.

The future for the S&P 500 lost 1% and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.7% lower.

CBS/AP

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Thursday that it had struck four vessels transferring oil ship-to-ship in the Persian Gulf after they used a route through the Strait of Hormuz that Iran rejects. Ship-to-ship cargo transfers have become more common as tankers and other commercial vessels try to avoid Iranian detection and strikes in the strategic waterway.

In a statement, the IRGC Navy said it "monitored and pursued four violating vessels that had previously passed through an illegal route," referring to shipping lanes in the strait that the Trump administration has encouraged vessels to use to avoid Iranian fees and controls. Tehran considers those southern routes, close to Oman's coast, unauthorized and has targeted vessels trying to use them for months.

"They discovered the vessels transferring oil cargoes from ship to ship in the north-central part of the Persian Gulf," the bulletin read. "All four ships were hit simultaneously and are burning."

The IRGC said three other ships attempting to use routes not recognized by Iran "suffered accidents and caught fire after striking mines west of the Strait of Hormuz, and were brought to a halt."

The IRGC said the U.S. "encouraging vessels to pass through an illegally mined passage has led to an increasing number of maritime incidents day by day."

"If this course continues," the group warned, "the confrontation will extend to the bases of the aggressors in the region."

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority said Thursday that the latest attack on the kingdom's airports, a strike on the eastern city of Dammam's King Fahd International Airport, had risen to two. 

"The number of deaths resulting from the attack has risen to two, after confirming an additional death. The deceased were a Saudi citizen and a resident of Indian nationality," the General Authority of Civil Aviation said in a statement shared on social media.

It said eight others, "a Saudi citizen, two residents each of Indian, Yemeni, and Bangladeshi nationalities, and a resident of Nepalese nationality," were injured in the attack.

The statement did not assign blame for the attack, but Iran's Houthi allies in Yemen have attacked Saudi airports and other infrastructure for weeks in retaliation for the Saudi government's backing of Yemeni state forces in the neighboring nation's decade-long civil war.

GACA said in its statement that it was continuing work in conjunction with other security authorities "to assess the damages, and to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of passengers and employees, and to maintain the security and safety of the civil aviation system in the Kingdom." 

Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia in recent weeks have inflicted severe losses on the kingdom and prompted the U.S. to quietly reduce its military footprint in the region as missiles hit energy infrastructure and civilian airports, killing more than 20 people.

Saudi Arabia, despite its size, wealth and a substantial military, has appeared to be on the back foot as it faces the Yemeni rebels. 

Saudi Arabia spent $83 billion on defense last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute — far more than any other country in the Middle East, including Israel.

So, why has the kingdom struggled to stop the Houthi barrage? Read our full story here.

An attack targeting the King Fahd International Airport in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Dammam killed one person and injured eight others Wednesday evening, the kingdom's civil aviation authority said.

The authority said in a statement that injuries from the attack ranged from "minor to serious" and that material damage to the airport was also being assessed.

It did not describe what type of attack occurred, but the kingdom's airports have been targeted repeatedly by projectiles in recent days by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militants.

A U.S. official and a senior U.S. military official told CBS News on Wednesday the military has been quietly reducing its footprint at posts in the Middle East due to ongoing regional threats from the Houthis and direct threats from Iran.

NBC News was first to report on the drawdowns.

Asked about the reports, U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told CBS News: "We regularly move U.S. service members and assets to optimize mission readiness. We do not discuss related movements for operational security reasons. U.S. forces remain vigilant and ready to protect American personnel and interests across the region."

The U.S. State Department has also ordered non-essential U.S. embassy personnel and their families to depart Saudi Arabia, citing threats posed by the Iran-backed Houthis.

CBS News has learned several U.S. embassies in the Middle East have adjusted their staffing under "restricted operations" status.

The restricted operations status, which the department introduced in August amid flare-ups in the war with Iran, allows embassies to reduce staffing and services without fully suspending operations.

Read more here.

The Saudi energy ministry said that falling debris from the interception of a drone targeting an oil facility killed two people and injured two others on Wednesday.

"The attempted attack resulted in the deaths of two individuals, a Filipino and a Nepali, and injuries to two others," the ministry said in a statement. It did not say who launched the drone aimed at the Shaybah oil field near the UAE border.

The U.S. has ordered all non-emergency government employees and their families to leave Saudi Arabia as the kingdom faces escalating attacks by Houthi militants.

"Iranian-supported Houthis have increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure resulting in civilian casualties and severe travel disruptions," State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a social media post Wednesday.

The order came a few days after the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and several other countries warned that hostilities could rapidly and without warning spread beyond areas already affected by the fighting.

"The safety and security of Department personnel and their families remain our highest priority, and we will continue to take all necessary steps to protect and support them," Pigott added.

Read more here.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi issued a warning to the U.S. on Wednesday afternoon, saying it should choose diplomacy over returning to war.

"Iran is prepared to give diplomacy another chance if we see strong evidence of a sincere desire by US to build trust & reach a just solution," he wrote on X, sharing a link to an opinion piece in the Financial Times. "But if US chooses war over diplomacy, it'll certainly result in an even greater strategic failure."

Araghchi said earlier in the day that Iran and the U.S. were still involved in indirect negotiations via mediators over the seven-day ceasefire proposal from September. The proposal was outright rejected by President Trump, but Araghchi said the U.S. was trying to add further clauses to the agreement.

The U.S. Treasury announced new sanctions on the Panamanian-Greek law firm Karnakis and Karnakis for involvement in Iran's "shadow fleet" as part of its Operation Economic Outcast.

The U.S. accuses Karnakis and Karnakis of being indirectly involved in Iran's illicit shipping operations for years. A "shadow fleet" refers to oil tankers that hide their true ownership in order to evade sanctions.

"Whether you are conducting illegal oil transfers at sea or sitting in the corner office of a law firm, if you are supporting the Iranian regime, we will find you and sanction you," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. "Iran's facilitators must make a choice: Either you are with us or against us. We know who you are, we know what you're doing, and we will continue to take action."

The Treasury also said it sanctioned Singapore- and UAE-based shipping agents, including a fleet of cargo vessels that has directly taken part in Iran's "shadow fleet" and "helped generate substantial revenue for the Iranian regime." 

A limited number of Saudi airlines took off and landed at the country's main airport on Wednesday, two days after authorities notified airlines that they could resume operations with prior permission.

Saudia and FlyNas were operating flights Wednesday, according to flight-tracking data published by FlightAware. Major carriers, including Lufthansa and Air France, have canceled flights through mid-November.

Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport has been hit multiple times this month by Yemen's Houthi rebels and shut down on Oct. 10. A strike two weeks ago killed 13 people and injured hundreds more.

The Houthis have acknowledged attacking the airport, claiming without evidence that Saudi Arabia provided military equipment to government forces through the facility.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said any interference in the Yemen war by Egypt or any other country would make the situation "more difficult."

"Egypt has sufficient experience to avoid entangling itself in such a highly complex conflict," said Iran's top diplomat in an interview with Iraqi state broadcaster Al-Iraqiya aired on Tuesday.

"We believe that any foreign presence or interference will only make resolving this issue more difficult," Araghchi noted.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday that Cairo's proposed military support for Riyadh was to "defend Saudi territory, and does not include an attack on Yemen," according to a statement from his office.

At a government event titled Egypt Forum 2026, Sisi said the "objective is to defend the kingdom's lands and borders, as well as those of any other Arab state, should it be requested of Egypt," his spokesman said in a statement.

Sisi on Saturday had asked parliament to authorize support for Saudi Arabia in its war with the Houthis, "if requested."

The parliament, which is stacked with supporters of the president, has since held two rare secret sessions, before postponing deliberations until next week.

Iran's newly appointed defense minister, Mehrdad Akhlaghi, said Wednesday his first hours in office were devoted to meeting the requirements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Aerospace Force and the army's air defense units.

"We are not in a war of rhetoric in response to repeated threats; we are turning threats into greater readiness and more effective defensive power," he wrote in his first post on X since taking office.

Akhlaghi added Iran was concentrating on its objectives through the use of new technologies.

"We may eat dirt, but we will not give up our soil," he concluded.

President Trump blocked a planned Israeli multiday operation that would have resumed strikes against Iran on the weekend of Oct. 10, according to the Financial Times.

The plan was designed to exceed the intensity of the joint U.S.-Israeli military offensive launched in February, three people familiar with the matter told the paper, and would have struck Iranian nuclear sites, regime targets and civilian infrastructure such as power plants.

The president blocked the strike to avoid escalating conflict before the U.S. midterm elections, according to the report.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he had directed the Israeli army and intelligence services to topple the Iranian regime.

"The regime in Iran has still not learned the lesson," Netanyahu told a graduation ceremony at an officer training school in the country's southern Negev desert. 

"Mojtaba Khamenei, the current tyrant, has decided to follow in his father's footsteps," he said, referring to the country's supreme leader, who replaced his father Ali Khamenei after he was killed in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike on Feb. 28. 

"He has taken the safety off, and Iran is once again attempting to develop 'death bombs,'" he added, without giving details on what exactly he was referring to.

"There is only one way to remove this threat once and for all," Netanyahu said, "by toppling the regime in Iran. And that is my directive to the [Israel Defense Forces], the Mossad, and the security services."

He did not expand on how he expected the military or intelligence services to carry out the directive.

Saudi Arabia has held talks with a senior Syrian military delegation on arrangements to transfer up to 10,000 Syrian fighters to take part in the war against Yemen's Houthi movement, according to a report by the Lebanese Hezbollah-owned Al-Akhbar newspaper, citing Yemeni intelligence sources.

The report claims Syrian military officials visited Saudi Arabia's southern regions of Najran and Asir to inspect sites prepared to receive the fighters, while discussions in Riyadh covered transport logistics, financing and military assignments.

The Syrian delegation included Brig. Gen. Khaled Khattab, former commander of the Ansar al-Tawhid faction and current commander of the 82nd Division in the new Syrian army; and Brig. Gen.Haitham al-Ali, also known as Abu Muslim, commander of the army's Third Corps and a former leader in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Khattab reportedly spent four days in southern Saudi Arabia, accompanied by Saudi officers, visiting sites in the regions of Asir and Najran being prepared to receive Syrian fighters. Meanwhile, al-Ali held several meetings with Saudi officers at the Defense Ministry in Riyadh to discuss the costs of transferring around 10,000 fighters, financial arrangements, additional benefits and their intended military tasks. The delegation reportedly finalized logistical arrangements for the transfer.

The report also raises the possibility that foreign fighters currently in Syria, including Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Tajiks and other nationalities, could be transferred to Yemen.

A missile industry veteran has been tapped as Iran's new defense minister, replacing the previous minister who was killed on Feb. 28, the first day of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Iranian parliamentarians overwhelmingly approved the appointment of Mehrdad Akhlaghi Ketabchi, 68, as the country's new defense chief on Sunday.  

Akhlaghi studied chemical engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology and then spent more than four decades working in Iran's military industries, holding senior positions in the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group, the Aerospace Industries Organization  – which has worked on missile development in cooperation with Russia, China and North Korea –  and the Defense Industries Organization.

He worked with Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander widely regarded as the father of Iran's missile industry.

Akhlaghi has been under international sanctions since 2007 because of his involvement in Iran's missile programs.

His appointment comes as Iran works to rebuild its military facilities and replenish weapons lost during the war. He has pledged to strengthen domestic arms production, and his background suggests rebuilding Iran's missile programs will be a priority for the ministry.

Iranian army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia has claimed repeatedly since late August that Iran has rebuilt its weapons manufacturing capacity, including last week, when it said the country was now able to make more arms than "even before it [the war] began."

Early in the war, the U.S. military said it had destroyed more than 85% of Iran's "defense industrial base," and President Trump had previously claimed Iran's military capabilities were destroyed by U.S. strikes, but experts have questioned that assessment, and Iran has demonstrated an ongoing capacity to launch attacks on ships in the region.

A Qatari aircraft arrived in Tehran Tuesday just minutes after a plane carrying Pakistan's army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, departed. The Qatari plane left the Iranian capital approximately 30 minutes later, according to aviation tracking data cited by Iran's semi-official Fars News agency.

The aircraft's short stay raised questions about whether it might have been carrying a diplomatic message amid ongoing indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. Qatar is among the nations that have acted as mediators between the two sides for months.

No information about the aircraft's passengers or why it was in Tehran for only half an hour was provided in the Fars report.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they had targeted a Saudi military operations room at Badr Camp in Aden, in southwest Yemen, with a ballistic missile on Wednesday.

Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, in a post on X, called the strike a direct hit.

"Our armed forces successfully targeted the enemy Saudi operations room at Badr Camp in Aden with a ballistic missile. The strike was accurate and direct," he said.

Aden is the de facto seat of power of Yemen's Saudi-backed government, which was forced to decamp after the Houthis occupied the national capital Sanaa more than a decade ago. 

The attack claimed by the Houthis Wednesday was the third in a week on Aden.

A police official in Aden told the French news agency AFP earlier that there had been a blast "caused by a Houthi missile." Two other security sources told AFP the strike targeted a site near the city's airport.

A senior official from Iran's Revolutionary Guard threatened to target undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz if Iranian infrastructure comes under attack.

Brig. Gen. Yadollah Javani, the IRGC's deputy for political affairs, warned Iran would use its full capabilities to retaliate if the U.S. and its allies launch new attacks against Iranian infrastructure. He said various investments and assets, including undersea cables carrying internet data in the strategic waterway, could be among the targets of Iranian retaliation if hostilities resume.

"The Americans and their allies have significant investments, and if they want to damage our infrastructure, it is natural that the Islamic Republic will use all its capabilities and easily destroy their investments and assets, including the internet cables that pass beneath the waters of the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

Analysts say cutting the cables in the waterway would most likely affect internet connectivity in Persian Gulf countries.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday that Tehran and Washington were still engaged in indirect negotiations via mediators over the seven-day ceasefire proposal presented by Iran in September.

Araghchi said the U.S. was seeking to add further clauses to the Iranian proposal, which Mr. Trump rejected last month. 

The proposal called for the end of the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and vessels, the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil sales, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the release of frozen Iranian assets.

He said Pakistan and Qatar were among the nations facilitating the indirect talks between Iran and the U.S., as they have been for months.

"The negotiating table remains in place," Araghchi said. "It is the American side that is closing the path, not Iran."

U.S. diplomatic missions across the Middle East have issued a new round of security warnings to Americans amid escalating attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants against Saudi Arabia, including an Oct. 10 strike on Riyadh's international airport that killed an American citizen.

The alerts, issued Sunday by U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and several other countries, warned that hostilities could rapidly and without warning spread beyond areas already affected by the fighting. The advisories urged Americans to exercise vigilance and prepare for possible flight cancellations, airspace closures and other travel disruptions.

"We are actively warning U.S. citizens about the very real threat the Houthis pose and urging them to heed official guidance," Edgar Vasquez, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for press, told CBS News.

"These alerts are part of a proactive effort by the Trump administration to ensure Americans are aware of potential risks," Vasquez said, adding that the safety and security of American citizens remain the department's "top priority."

Read more here.

President Trump said the U.S. is "doing very well with Iran" and he's just deciding how he wants to win the war. 

"As you know, we're doing very well with Iran," Mr. Trump said as he took questions from reporters in the Oval Office at an unrelated executive order signing. "We just have to make a final decision of which way do we want to win? Do we want to win the nice way or the not nice way? But we're doing very well."

The war, which Mr. Trump said would take only a few weeks in March, has now dragged on for almost eight months with no apparent end in sight. Iran said on Tuesday it would not return to the negotiating table unless the U.S. drops its sanctions, threats and pressure campaign — an unlikely demand.

The president also discussed Europe not helping the U.S. with the war with Iran, saying, "We don't need any help. But I was testing them."

"I just called individual presidents and prime ministers to ask, would they like to help us? And they said, 'No,'" Mr. Trump said. "I said, 'Well, that's not nice.' You know, we spend hundreds of billions a year on NATO. And they said no."