The Situation Room - June 10th

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I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• U.S. Strikes Iran After Downing Of U.S. Helicopter

• Zelensky Attends Nordic-Baltic Summit

• U.S. House Passes Legislation To Fund I.C.E. & Border Patrol For 3 Years

U.S. Strikes Iran After Downing Of U.S. Helicopter

_{By: Atlas}

The U.S. military struck Iran on Tuesday evening, hitting air defenses and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz a day after Iranian forces brought down an Army Apache helicopter over the same waters.

Central Command said the operation began at 5 p.m. Eastern at President Donald Trump's direction and called it a "proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression." By late Tuesday the command said the strikes were complete, reporting that Air Force and Navy fighter jets had hit Iranian air defense systems, ground control stations, and surveillance radar near the strait with precision munitions.

Iranian state media described large explosions along the country's southern coast, near the cities of Bandar Abbas and Sirik and the island of Qeshm, and said the situation afterward was calm. No damage to U.S. assets was immediately reported.

Trump framed the response as deliberate and limited. "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," he told an ABC reporter by phone. House Speaker Mike Johnson described the operation as "proportional and limited," tying it to what he called Iranian attacks on U.S. assets and personnel.

The Apache and a first-of-its-kind rescue

The strikes answered the loss of an AH-64 Apache that went down Monday evening while patrolling near Oman's coast and the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said the military first logged the incident as a crash before an investigation concluded Iran had shot the aircraft down. A U.S. official said a one-way Iranian attack drone brought it down.

Both crew members survived without injuries and were listed in stable condition. Their rescue was itself a milestone. The two soldiers were pulled from the water about two hours after the helicopter went down by a Corsair unmanned surface vessel, a Navy drone boat, in what officials called the first operation of its kind. The crew was then moved to another point on the water and hoisted into a helicopter for further care.

The Corsair is built by Saronic Technologies of Austin, runs 24 feet long, and carries up to 1,000 pounds. The Navy first fielded the vessels in the region in March and awarded Saronic a $392 million contract for them late last year. The unit behind the rescue, Task Force 59, specializes in maritime drones.

The Apache was the latest in a long line of U.S. aircraft lost in the conflict. A congressional report last month counted at least 42 aircraft destroyed or damaged, among them an F-15E shot down in early April, whose crew was recovered, and an Air Force refueling plane that crashed in Iraq, killing six service members.

Tehran promises to hit back

Iran signaled quickly that it would answer. The Revolutionary Guard warned of a heavy response and said it could strike U.S. bases in the region, naming the Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. An IRGC-linked outlet claimed Iran had already launched missiles and drones at American targets.

By early Wednesday, the Guard said it had carried out that threat, announcing a drone strike on the Bahraini Fifth Fleet and warning of "heavier responses" if the attacks continued. It said the U.S. operation had damaged a telecommunications mast in Sirik and destroyed two water tanks.

Iran's account of the helicopter itself was less certain than Washington's. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States had chosen to "test our determination" and vowed that Iran's forces would leave no attack unanswered, but he also suggested the downing might have been an accident, writing that foreign forces near Iranian territory face constant risk from "human errors, plain accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire." A deputy foreign minister told Al Jazeera that Tehran had not "deliberately" shot down the aircraft. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was blunter, telling Trump that Iran preferred diplomacy but spoke "other languages far more fluently."

A ceasefire stretched to its limit

The exchange put fresh strain on a truce that has been fraying for weeks. The ceasefire, first declared in early April, remains technically in force but has survived a string of attacks from both sides, including a weekend of missile fire between Israel and Iran that each halted only after the fact.

The fighting traces back to the war that began in late February, an effort the administration named Operation Epic Fury. Iran initially shut the Strait of Hormuz, a passage central to global energy supplies, and the United States answered with a blockade of Iranian ports that remains in place. Central Command has said Iran has launched more than 300 attacks on a dozen countries since the war began.

Lebanon stayed hot through the day as well. Israel ordered residents of the southern city of Tyre to evacuate and then struck the area, killing at least eight people, according to Lebanese authorities, as it pressed its campaign against Hezbollah.

Mixed signals on a deal

Even as he ordered the strikes, Trump worked to keep the door open to negotiations, and at times to play down the very attack he was responding to. He told the Wall Street Journal the helicopter incident "wasn't a big deal" and said the pilots were fine, adding that the facts were "much different" than what the public knew.

He has insisted for weeks that an agreement is near, saying Tuesday the two sides were in the "final throes" of a deal that would bar Iran from nuclear weapons and reopen the strait. He also warned of the cost of a wider war, noting that sustained bombing could leave Iran with little but would keep the strait closed for months.

The pressure to settle is partly domestic. Gas prices stood at $4.16 a gallon on Tuesday, down from a month earlier but still well above prewar levels, and some Republicans have pushed for a harder line. Sen. Ted Cruz said "enough is enough" after the Apache was lost, while others voiced growing impatience with talks that keep being described as nearly done. Whether Tuesday's strikes prove to be the limited reprisal Washington described, or the first move in a return to open war, was the question left hanging as Iran promised more to come.

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