Iran hit an oil tanker off the coast of Qatar and Kuwait's airport on Wednesday while airstrikes battered Tehran — an unrelenting tempo hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was nearly ready to wind down the war.

Trump, who is scheduled to address the nation later in the day, said he could walk away from the war in two to three weeks once he felt confident Iran would not be able to build a nuclear weapon — even if Tehran does not agree to a ceasefire.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the military could end its Iran offensive in two to three weeks and will shift responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz to countries that rely on it for oil and shipping as the White House announced a prime-time presidential address Wednesday evening on the war.

Trump said Tuesday that U.S. forces would end operations in Iran "very soon," evoking the timeline of two to three weeks as his administration pursues talks with Iranian authorities while continuing its aerial campaign.

Yemen's Houthis on Wednesday claimed a missile attack targeting Israel that they said was launched jointly with their backer Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah group -- the third such attack by the Houthis since they entered the Middle East war.

The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen said Wednesday they fired a barrage of ballistic missiles toward Israel.

U.S. President Donald Trump told The New York Post on Tuesday that he believes the Iran war is likely to end soon and that other nations can reopen the Strait of Hormuz themselves — after he posted to social media a video of huge explosions near Isfahan that he said hit “a lot of stuff.”

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that the next days of the Iran war will be "decisive" while refusing to rule out U.S. ground forces playing a role in the conflict.

U.S. President Donald Trump said nations upset by high fuel prices should "go get your own oil" as Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

His comments in a social media post on Tuesday came as average U.S. gas prices shot past $4 a gallon.

The Gulf states are unified in calling for a de-escalation of the Middle East war, Qatar said Tuesday as Tehran launched new strikes against its neighbors.

"Our understanding is that there is a very unified position in the Gulf on calling for the de-escalation and an end to the war," Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told a regular news briefing.

Satellite images are beginning to be released giving a glimpse into the toll of the Iran war, with ships ablaze in an Iranian port and destroyed buildings at American bases in the region.

Information has so far been scarce about the damage being done across the Middle East, particularly when it's inside closed military facilities, since the war started on Feb. 28.

Gulf allies of the United States, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are urging President Donald Trump to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Tehran hasn't been weakened enough by the monthlong U.S.-led bombing campaign, according to U.S., Gulf and Israeli officials.

After private grumbling at the start of the war that they were not given adequate advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli attack and complaining the U.S. had ignored their warnings that the war would have devastating consequences for the entire region, some of the regional allies are making the case to the White House that the moment offers a historic opportunity to cripple Tehran's clerical rule once and for all.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets across the embattled Palestinian territories Tuesday in outrage after Israel's parliament passed a measure establishing the death penalty by hanging for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis.

Palestinians young and old held sit-ins and marches in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the territory where the new law is most sweeping. It orders West Bank military courts — which try only Palestinians — to make the death penalty the default sentence for those convicted, except in special circumstances.