We are starting to get an idea of the areas that the US has targeted in its attacks on Iran.

Iranian state media have reported attacks on Sirik and Bandar Abbas – both areas along the coast of the strait of Hormuz – and Qeshm, an island in the strait.

Axios is reporting that the US is targeting Iranian air defence batteries and radar systems around the strait.

We have yet to hear directly from Donald Trump, since the US military began striking Iran in response to the downing of an Apache helicopter on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, the president said the US would “respond” to the downing of the helicopter, and accused Iran of shooting it down.

Since the bombing restarted he has posted a Reuters report from January about America’s widening trade deficit to his Truth Social account, and another report from April claiming the trade deficit was narrowing.

Donald Trump has said he wanted a “very powerful” response to Iran shooting down the US helicopter, according to Jonathan Karl, correspondents for ABC News.

Karl says he was on the phone with Trump as the US military announced the strikes on Iran.

“I think it’s very important to respond. They shot down a helicopter, and we are responding as we speak,” Trump said, according to Karl.

“This is a response to what they did … with our helicopter last night, and I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that’s what this one is.”

• The US began launching airstrikes at Iran in response to a military helicopter crash off the strait of Hormuz that Donald Trump said Iran had downed. Iran state media is currently reporting explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas and the island of Qeshm, according to Reuters. US Central Command said the strikes came “at the Commander in Chief’s direction”.

• Five hours before the airstrikes, Trump had posted on social media that the US “must” respond to the helicopter crash, from which two crew members were rescued in stable condition. Before his social media post, however, Trump appeared to down play the crash, telling the Wall Street Journal in a phone interview that it “wasn’t a big deal” and that “the pilot is fine.” Centcom had also posted on social media that the crash was under investigation.

• Iranian state media reported that no air military operations have taken place in the strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours, according to Reuters – which means Iran did not shoot down the US military helicopter. However, the military source quoted by Iranian state media said there would be a “decisive response” to any renewed hostility from the US because of the helicopter crash.

• Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Araghchi warned that “foreign forces in proximity to our territory are at constant risk on account of their own human errors, plain accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire” in a post on X that came after Trump’s Truth Social declaration that the US “must” respond.

• Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Tyre on Tuesday. The state-run National News Agency (NNA) had reported the first strike taking place not long before Israel’s military issued an evacuation warning for the entire city and surrounding areas ahead of strikes there.

• Britain, Canada, France and Norway announced new coordinated sanctions on Tuesday against Israeli networks involved in financing, enabling and carrying out violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The move follows escalating violence by Israeli settlers, which diplomats say is intended to undermine prospects for a Palestinian state.

• Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group, has thanked Iran for attacking Israel “in defence” of Lebanese people, suggesting that Lebanon’s government should take this opportunity to improve relations with Tehran. In a statement on Tuesday, Hezbollah said Lebanese authorities should “take advantage of this opportunity and correct their official relations with the Islamic Republic in a way that serves the interests of both countries.”

• UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday he was “deeply alarmed” by the renewed escalation in violence in the Middle East. “All attacks must stop immediately. The ceasefires in Lebanon, Iran + Gaza must be fully respected,” he said in a post on X.

The US strikes on Iran came just five hours after Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran had shot down a US military helicopter that was patrolling the strait of Hormuz and that the US “must” respond.

Earlier, US Central Command said the crash – in which two crew members were rescued in stable condition – was still under investigation. In a phone call with the Wall Street Journal before his Truth Social post, Trump appeared to also down play the crash, telling the Journal that it “wasn’t a big deal” and that “the pilot is fine.”

Iranian state media is reporting explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas and the island of Qeshm, according to Reuters.

The US military began launching “self-defense” strikes again Iran at 5 p.m. EST Tuesday – about 1 a.m. local time, US Central Command said.

The strikes come “at the Commander in Chief’s direction” in response to yesterday’s downing of a US Army Apache helicopter,” Centcom said.

“The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” the post reads.

The Lebanese health ministry said Tuesday that an Israeli strike killed three near Tyre in southern Lebanon, bringing the death toll up to 11 in the region, AFP reports.

Nine people were also wounded in the strike.

Iranian state media is reporting that no air military operations have taken place in the strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours, according to Reuters – which means Iran did not shoot down the US military helicopter, an attack to which Donald Trump says the US “must” respond.

The military source quoted by Iranian state media said there would be a “decisive response” to any renewed hostility from the US because of the helicopter crash, Reuters reports.

In that same statement on X, Seyed Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, once again asserted his belief that the strait of Hormuz is an exclusively Omani-Iranian waterway and that Iran has a right to defend itself against foreign forces in its territory.

The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour has more details on how this assertion butts against the principle of freedom of navigation – international laws protecting freedom of movement at sea:

Western diplomats say Iranian proposals for the future permanent management of the strait are unlawful since they impose tolls on commercial shipping and would give Iran an arbitrary right to select the ships that are allowed passage, possibly based on the nationality of ownership.…The legal rights of coastal states to impose tolls lies at the heart of the deadlock on how to reopen the strait and whether Iran’s proposed move, by restricting freedom of navigation, is illegal and sets a precedent for other similar waterways.

Iran became a signatory to the UN convention on the law of the sea (Unclos) in 1982, very soon after the 1979 revolution, but never ratified the treaty.

This means that from Iran’s perspective it is not bound by the treaty’s transit passage rules that underpin freedom of navigation, but instead by customary international law, including a more restrictive right of innocent passage.

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