President Donald Trump announced "major combat operations" against Iran on Feb. 28, with massive joint U.S.-Israeli strikes attack targeting military and government sites, officials said.
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President Donald Trump said in a post to social media on Monday morning that the U.S. is currently engaged in "serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran," but threatened to expand U.S. strikes if the negotiations fail.
"Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately 'Open for Business,' we will conclude our lovely 'stay' in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched,'" Trump wrote.
"This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime's 47 year 'Reign of Terror,'" Trump added.
Two Chinese container ships that turned back from trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz on Friday successfully transited the strategic chokepoint on Monday, according to MarineTraffic data published on X.
The ultra-large container vessels are owned by China's state-owned COSCO Shipping company.
MarineTraffic said it was the "first confirmed crossing by a major container carrier since the start of the conflict" which could signal "a potential shift in conditions for commercial shipping."
The two ships that crossed the Strait on Monday were the CSCL Indian Ocean and CSCL Arctic Ocean, MarinteTraffix said.
-ABC News' Charlotte Gardiner
The Israel Defense forces said on Monday that rescue and emergency services were responding to the scenes of reported strikes in northern Israel.
The IDF statement came after reports of missile fire from Iran and from the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Photos and videos from the northern Israeli city of Haifa showed emergency services responding to a fire at an oil refinery.
There were no immediate reports of injuries related to Monday morning's attacks.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Monday that it struck around 40 sites across Tehran over the previous two days, which it alleged were involved in weapons research and production.
The IDF claimed that among the sites targeted were facilities used for the assembly of anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missiles and ballistic missiles.
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed concern over the war in Iran and suggested that the U.S. is starting to "jeopardize" the world order that it helped build after World War II, he said Friday, while speaking to students at Yonsei University in South Korea.
"Iran is a very bad regime — no discussion about that. I disagree with them on a lot of topics. But I don’t believe that we will fix the situation just by bombings or by military operations. Look at what happened with this type of operation in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya — we never delivered. Never. Even after 20 years," Macron said.
"So you have to respect the sovereignty of people. If people want to change a regime, they want to react, step up, they can do so," he said.
