US carries out limited strikes on Iran's Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, officials say

The U.S. military carried out limited strikes on Iranian targets on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, U.S. officials said, the day before Americans vote in the midterm elections.

A senior U.S. official told CBS News the strikes followed fire from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on an American aircraft. Two officials told ABC News the strikes were defensive and limited in scope, and that they do not signal a return to major combat operations against Iran. The Wall Street Journal first reported the strikes.

Iranian state media reported explosions on the islands of Qeshm and Hengam and in the nearby mainland area of Bandar Abbas, The Associated Press reported. Unlike earlier in the war, the strikes were not publicly announced, the AP reported, and the U.S. military had not commented, according to the BBC.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said its forces shot down U.S. drones near the strait, the BBC reported. A U.S. official told ABC News that an Iranian claim to have downed two reconnaissance drones was false.

The strikes come as U.S. and Qatari mediators work on a possible U.S.-Iran deal, CBS reported. President Donald Trump said in a social media post Monday that a deal "could happen," and later told Fox News that the U.S. still had to "take care of" several sites in Iran, including Pickaxe Mountain, which houses a suspected nuclear site, according to CBS. The AP noted that Trump had previously said the U.S. would not launch strikes on Iran before the midterms.

The Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about a fifth of the world's oil and gas shipments, has been effectively closed since the start of the war because of Iranian attacks on commercial ships and a U.S. naval blockade, the BBC reported.