President Donald Trump told Fox News the United States is closing in on a decision to strike Iranian power plants and bridges, accusing Tehran of “tapping the U.S. along” through stalled negotiations.

“I may keep going,” Trump told Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst. “They had a chance to sign a deal and survive.” The president said he was getting closer to ordering the military to hit Iran’s civilian infrastructure, accusing Iranian leaders of dragging their feet on a peace agreement that has gone weeks without progress.

The comments came hours after U.S. forces struck Iranian targets overnight in retaliation for the downing of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. A senior U.S. official told Fox News that 20 targets inside Iran were hit Tuesday night. U.S. Central Command said the strikes had ended but that the situation remained “active,” and that American forces were prepared to respond if Iran retaliated again.

In the same interview, Trump offered new details about how the Apache went down. He said the Iranian drone that hit the helicopter got “lodged between the two pilots,” and that the drone was on fire but did not explode as the crew brought the helicopter down into the water.

The two crew members were rescued within about two hours by an unmanned Navy surface vessel, in what the military described as the first operation of its kind. The drone boat, a roughly 24-foot uncrewed craft operated by CENTCOM’s Task Force 59, found the soldiers off the coast of Oman, and both were reported safe and in stable condition. A U.S. official told Axios that an Iranian drone struck the aircraft, though investigators had not determined whether the hit was intentional. CNN reported the weapon may have been a Shahed-type attack drone, a slow-moving model that flies to preset coordinates, a detail that could support the theory that the strike was not deliberate.

CENTCOM said the retaliatory strikes targeted Iranian air defense sites, ground-control stations and surveillance radar near the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes.

Iran answered quickly. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it launched drone attacks on the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and the Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait, along with a long-range missile strike on a base in Azraq, Jordan. It claimed it hit 21 U.S. targets and destroyed four, including an F-35 hangar at the base in Jordan.

U.S. assessments said nearly all of the missiles and drones were intercepted. Jordan said it shot down five Iranian missiles, with shrapnel causing no damage or casualties. Iran said the U.S. strikes hit reservoirs supplying drinking water to 20,000 people. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran would leave no attack unanswered.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)