The US carried out limited strikes on Iran's Qeshm Island on Monday evening, targeting surface-to-air missiles used against American assets, according to the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and the Associated Press. The attacks were described as defensive and not a signal of resumed full hostilities. Iranian state media reported several explosions on the island, with local outlets describing the cause as unclear. US Central Command did not respond to requests for comment. The WSJ reported these strikes were part of a broader series of recent attacks on Iran that the Trump administration had deliberately kept secret — smaller in scale and designed to avoid signaling intent to resume the wider military campaign. The US has targeted Qeshm Island multiple times throughout the war, given its strategic position at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, where it has been used to launch attacks on shipping. Hours before the strikes became public, Vice President JD Vance told reporters that he and Trump "feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement" with Iran, following Tehran's acknowledgment of indirect negotiations with Washington. Trump, speaking to Fox News before polls opened Tuesday, insisted "there's no war raging" and said Iran "want to make a deal very badly." The contradiction is structural, not accidental. The administration is running a dual track: covert military action to degrade Iranian capabilities while publicly projecting optimism about diplomacy. The secrecy serves both tracks — it avoids provoking Iranian hardliners who might torpedo talks, while continuing to impose costs that improve the US negotiating position. But it also serves a third, domestic track: shielding Republican midterm candidates from the political cost of visible escalation. Trump's midterm problem is concrete and measurable. Rising petrol prices caused by the war — and Iran's continued enforcement of the Strait of Hormuz closure by targeting oil tankers and shipping — have become the signature issue of Tuesday's elections. Polls show voters likely to punish Republicans for cost-of-living effects. Trump hailed a sharp drop in oil prices driven by diplomatic signals, but the underlying supply disruption remains unresolved as long as the strait stays closed. The most revealing moment came when Trump told Sean Hannity the US might still "have to go after Pickaxe Mountain" — a fortified underground site suspected of being a nuclear facility — but called it "not a big deal" that could be done in "one hour." This is simultaneously a negotiating threat aimed at Tehran and domestic messaging designed to frame potential escalation as trivial. It is neither. The pattern is clear: the administration needs oil prices to fall, needs diplomatic progress to be visible, and needs military strikes to remain invisible. This works only as long as covert operations stay covert — and as of Monday evening, they didn't. The question now is whether the diplomatic track moves fast enough to close the strait before the economic damage becomes politically unrecoverable, or whether the dual-track approach collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.
