Trump brushes off Saudi blockade threat declaring  ‘we’re not finished at all’, as Pentagon budget blows out

Donald Trump warned the US was “not finished” attacking Iran as strikes continued for an 11th-consecutive night as Tehran broadened its offensive against Gulf states after its Houthi allies threatened to blockade Saudi ports.

Two weeks after fighting resumed between the decades-old foes, the US President said Iran would need more than 20 years to recover from the damage inflicted in the Middle East war.

“If we left right now, it would take Iran 20, 25 years to rebuild,” he said. “We’re not finished at all ... we’re not leaving right now.”

Mr Trump’s threat follows his defence secretary Pete Hegseth revealing the war in Iran had cost $US37.5 billion ($A53.4b) so far, an increase of nearly $US8b since the last public estimate.

The Washington Post reported the Pentagon faces an urgent budget shortfall caused by the war with some critical lines of funding set to run out within weeks.

Mr Hegseth told politicians at a hearing in Washington that military training would need to be curtailed without an urgent funding boost.

Only last month he dismissed concerns about munitions shortages, saying US stockpiles were “great, and they’re only getting stronger.”

In their latest update The US military said it targeted military infrastructure to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian state media said Wednesday its air defence was triggered across Tehran,

“News sources reported minutes ago that air defence activity was heard in the west, east and northeast of Tehran,” state TV posted on Telegram.

State media reported strikes in northwest and south Iran, and explosions in the city of Bushehr, which hosts a nuclear power plant.

Mr Trump also said the next US military target could be an underground complex known as Pickaxe Mountain, a subterranean nuclear site near Natanz where Western intelligence suspects Iran is building an undeclared enrichment facility.

“We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” he said, adding that he would not normally announce targets but “there’s not a thing they can do about it”.

Iran threatened reprisal, with the Khatam Al-Anbiya military command saying it would “consider it as an expansion of war in the region” if such an attack were carried out, threatening strikes on “all the interests of America, the allies and supporters”, state-run broadcaster IRIB reported.

Bahrain meanwhile said it intercepted Iranian attacks as sirens sounded repeatedly, while Kuwait and Jordan said they had intercepted drone and missile strikes.

Kuwait’s army said Wednesday morning its air defences were engaging with drone attacks from Iran.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards confirmed a strike on Jordan, saying they had targeted a “complex housing US terrorist forces in the region of Rukban”.

The Iranian army earlier said it targeted US assets in Kuwait and Bahrain, including air defence systems, radar installations and administrative buildings.

“With this radar sweep, the enemy should prepare for even more decisive and powerful waves of drone and missile attacks,” the Guards said in a statement carried by state news agency IRNA.

Mr Trump said he would “take care of” Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels if they followed through on a threat to blockade Saudi Arabia’s ports.

“We’ve done that with the Houthis before, and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally,” Mr Trump said.

Saudi Arabia strongly condemned the threat from what it called the “terrorist Houthi militia”.

Maritime intelligence provider Vanguard Tech said a Singapore-flagged tanker and a Liberia-flagged tanker both “reversed course” in the Red Sea after loading crude at the Saudi port of Yanbu.

If the Houthis make good on the threat, they could endanger Riyadh’s ability to bypass the Strait of Hormuz for some oil exports, with major repercussions for the global economy.

Saudi Arabia and the Houthis traded fire last week for the first time in years, threatening a 2022 truce, but the rebels have remained on the sidelines since the start of the conflict.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Tuesday that two tankers attempting to transit the strait “were hit by explosions, resulting in massive fires that brought them to a standstill”.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency earlier reported that an “unknown projectile” struck a tanker off the coast of Oman.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said diplomatic exchanges with Washington through mediators were continuing.