Iran War This Week: Secret Strikes on Qeshm Island, and the Deal Both Sides Say They Want

In brief: The Iran war this week produced its strangest 48 hours yet: US jets struck Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz on the eve of the midterms, officials admitted weeks of quiet strikes, and both capitals talked up a deal. Below: the strikes, Iran's two-day reopening offer, the Houthi march on Aden, and why every Patriot interceptor in this fight is one Ukraine does not get.

Part of our NATO Security coverage.

Late on Monday night, hours before Americans voted, explosions rolled across Qeshm Island, the long Iranian island inside the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's state agency IRNA reported blasts in rapid succession and two aircraft overhead. By Tuesday the story was out: the United States is still fighting a war it has spent weeks insisting is over.

What happened in the Iran war this week

The Qeshm strikes were the first US attack on the island since June, per Al Jazeera. An unnamed US official told the Associated Press they were "defensive" and aimed at Iranian crews firing surface-to-air missiles at US assets. The Wall Street Journal, citing US officials, reported at least two incidents on Monday: in one, a US fighter jet struck back in self defense after Iran's Revolutionary Guard fired a surface-to-air missile at it, per CNN; in the other, US forces intercepted an Iranian missile fired from Qeshm at commercial shipping. IRNA claimed the IRGC had destroyed a US MQ-9 drone east of the strait beforehand. Central Command issued no statement, Stars and Stripes noted.

An MQ-9 Reaper, the type Iran claims to have downed east of the strait this week. Photo: US Air Force, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

President Trump described the target to Fox News as an anti-aircraft facility Iran took about two months to build. "We watched it get built," he said, calling the operation a "minor attack, it wasn't a war."

The bigger disclosure was what came with it. Officials told CNN and the Journal that Qeshm was part of a series of smaller strikes on Iran over recent weeks, kept quiet so as not to signal that major combat was resuming. On the campaign trail days earlier, Trump had said "we haven't been doing any fighting for months."

How the war got here

For a new reader: the war began on February 28, when the United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran, per Al Jazeera. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening days; his son Mojtaba was named successor on March 8. Iran answered by shutting the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, and it has stayed effectively shut ever since, more than eight months. A memorandum of understanding bought a ceasefire in June, then broke down. A March 7 US strike on a Qeshm desalination plant, which cut fresh water to about 30 villages, remains Tehran's defining grievance. The strait itself has stayed an active front all year, from mined tankers to the Dive-LD drone Iran fished out of the water in September.

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower transits the Strait of Hormuz in 2016. The strait has been the war's center of gravity since February. Photo: US Navy, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The strait that prices the world

The Strait of Hormuz is the war's real front. IMF PortWatch data tracked by the Straits OSINT project recorded 2 tanker transits on October 25 against a pre-war baseline of about 85 per day. Kpler data cited in the Global Oil Shock weekly report puts average daily flow through the strait at 11.7 million barrels in October against 14.5 million in February. Qatar's LNG exports have been under force majeure since April, now extended to the end of December.

The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, imaged by NASA's MODIS sensor. Photo: NASA, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The costs land everywhere. European gas trades near triple its pre-war level. US household heating oil averaged $6.19 a gallon in mid October, per the same report. And yet the week's defining market move ran the other way: Brent fell roughly 8 percent on the week, closing at $103.60 on November 3, its lowest since October 7, as traders priced in peace.

The deal on the table, and the hawks circling it

"The president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement," Vice President Vance said Monday, hours before the Qeshm strikes. Trump posted that "Iran wants a settlement, as soon as possible. It could happen!" and told the Financial Times, per Reuters, that the US has no immediate plans to strike Iran: "We seem to be getting everything we want."

Tehran is signaling back. President Masoud Pezeshkian said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has given the government "certain authorities" over talks, per Iranian media via Al Jazeera. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called consultations through mediators "very intensive"; Qatari mediators have been shuttling a draft deal for over a week and flew to Tehran Monday night. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran's September plan could be compressed and implemented in two days: reopen the strait, return to nuclear talks. The ball, he said, is in Washington's court.

The hawks have their own week. The New York Times reported November 3 that Israel shared intelligence claiming Iran may be preparing to use chemical weapons; some US officials took it seriously, others suspected an attempt to pull Washington back into major combat, and a Gulf official told the paper the conclusions came without supporting evidence. Tehran denies having chemical weapons. Trump has been weighing a strike on Pickaxe Mountain, the fortified site near Natanz where Israel believes Iran may keep enriched uranium, per reports cited by Stars and Stripes. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf answered that Iran's response to any "miscalculation" would be unpredictable: "Iran will not submit."

The second front: the Houthi march on Aden

While the principals talk, Iran's Yemeni ally is redrawing the map. Four military sources told Reuters on Monday that Houthi forces have advanced to within 80 kilometers of Aden, the seat of Yemen's internationally recognized government, their closest approach since they were driven out of the city in 2015. The assault took the whole of al-Maqatirah district in three days. The advance threatens the last road linking government territory to Taiz, encircled since early October with more than 100,000 people displaced, and could let the Houthis outflank government lines on the mountains above Bab el-Mandeb, the strait the Houthis took in September. The 2022 UN truce is gone; the offensive has opened a volatile new front in the wider war on Iran, per Reuters.

What the Iran war means for Ukraine

Every week this war runs, Ukraine pays a tax on it. The Patriot interceptors that stopped reaching Kyiv this autumn are the same rounds Washington holds back for Iranian retaliation: the Financial Times reported that Trump declined Europe's 300 interceptor winter request citing Iran war stocks, and CNN reported in October that Ukraine's Patriot missile shortage had left the ballistic shield effectively empty. The traffic also runs the other way: CBS reported in September that Ukrainian crews and interceptor drones have defended US bases in the region against Iranian Shaheds, the same airframe Russia launches at Kyiv by the hundreds. A closed Hormuz keeps crude above $100, cushioning the oil revenue that funds Russia's war. And with the US midterm results now consuming Washington, the bandwidth for both wars is thinner than ever. A settlement at Hormuz would free interceptors, attention, and price leverage. Another escalation locks all three away for the winter.

Why it matters

A war the White House says is not happening is still producing airstrikes, mined tankers, and a chemical weapons intelligence fight. The gap between "no fighting for months" and weeks of undisclosed strikes is where miscalculation lives. And the two-day reopening plan is the first offer in months that neither side has publicly killed.

What to watch

Washington's answer to Iran's two-day plan, now that the midterms are over. Whether the quiet strikes continue now that they are no longer quiet. Pickaxe Mountain, the clearest trigger for full resumption. The Aden road, the government's last land link toward Taiz. And the interceptor ledger: any Patriot deliveries freed toward Kyiv would be the first hard evidence that de-escalation is real.

The channel will keep tracking the strait, the strikes, and what both wars are doing to each other: t.me/TheLeaflet

Read next: Dead in the Water: Iran Fishes a US Navy Dive-LD Drone Out of the Strait of Hormuz and The Ukraine US Drone Deal Is Ready: Kyiv's Interceptors Already Defended American Bases From Iran

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If Washington takes the two-day Hormuz deal, does Ukraine actually see the freed-up Patriots, or do they stay in the Gulf? Drop your read in the comments, along with the location you want explained next Wednesday.

Sources

Al Jazeera (November 3, 2026); Stars and Stripes (November 3, 2026); Reuters via The New Arab (November 2, 2026); New York Times via Kyiv Post (November 3 and 4, 2026); Global Oil Shock weekly market report, citing Kpler (November 4, 2026); Straits OSINT tracker, citing IMF PortWatch (November 3, 2026); Financial Times via Reuters (November 3, 2026); CNN (October 15, 2026); CBS News (September 24, 2026); Washington Times (March 8, 2026). Photos: US Air Force, US Navy, and NASA via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.