Trump vows to 'beat the hell' out of Iran after surprise attack on US base, hints at strikes on proxies

President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday (local time) to retaliate forcefully against Iran following a surprise attack on a US military base in Jordan, while also signaling potential additional airstrikes against Iran-backed proxy forces in the Middle East. Tensions between Washington and Tehran are rising sharply again as Saudi Arabia joined US forces in striking Iran-aligned militias in Iraq.

Speaking by phone to Fox News on Wednesday morning, Trump used profanity and said, "We're going to beat the hell out of them." He added: "We're going to hit them hard. They're going to get hit."

The remarks amounted to a warning of a severe response to Iran's surprise strike on US military bases in the Middle East. Trump has previously used crude language to pressure Tehran — including a social media post in early April that read, "Open the damn (Strait of Hormuz), you crazy bastards."

Trump had carried out consecutive airstrikes against Iran from July 11 before halting them on July 24, and Iran's latest surprise attack has raised the prospect that US strikes could soon resume.

In the interview, Trump said US forces had only minutes to respond to Iran's surprise attack but managed to intercept all incoming projectiles before they reached their targets.

The comments appeared intended both to condemn Iran's surprise offensive and to highlight the US military's successful response.

US Central Command announced Wednesday evening that Iran had fired multiple ballistic missiles in a surprise attack against US military bases in the Middle East, all of which were successfully intercepted.

On the joint US-Saudi strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq on Tuesday, Trump said the operation had been coordinated with the Iraqi government. He called the militias "a cancer on the world" and said he was considering issuing additional warnings to Iran's proxy forces in the region, Fox News reported. The remarks were widely interpreted as signaling further strikes against Iran-aligned proxies in the Middle East.

Fears of a broader escalation are growing as Saudi Arabia — the leading Sunni power in the Middle East, which had largely avoided openly striking back at Iran since the outbreak of the war — joined the US in targeting Iranian-backed forces.