The U.S. launched another round of strikes on Iran last night, “to further degrade Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping and innocent civilian mariners in the Strait of Hormuz,” Centcom said in a statement. “U.S. forces struck approximately 90 Iranian military targets including air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, and military logistics infrastructure along Iran’s coastline.”
Iran responded today, Thursday, with salvos of ballistic missiles aimed at U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan. In a statement issued today, the IRGC said the missile strike constituted the second phase of Iran’s response to the U.S. military’s recent aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, reported Mehr News. The statement said the IRGC had previously warned that any renewed U.S. attack would broaden the scope of Iran’s retaliatory operations to include additional American military bases in the region. The IRGC further warned that if the “terrorist US military” repeats its attacks against Iran, other American bases across the region “will not be spared from our heavy fire.”
Unlike Tuesday night’s strikes, targets for this round appeared to include civilian infrastructure, including a railroad bridge in Golestan province in the north and dock facilities in the port of Bandar Abbas. Iranian authorities said that the strike on the rail bridge caused no casualties but has disrupted passenger traffic between Tehran and Mashhad, where the burial ceremony for Ali Khamenei was scheduled to begin in a few hours. The Islamic Republic of Iran Railways (RAJA) said railroad crews had been dispatched to the scene immediately after the attack and reconstruction work was underway, with efforts focused on restoring the line in the shortest possible time. RAJA added that arrangements have been made to transport passengers from stranded trains to the holy city of Mashhad by road using the country’s passenger bus fleet.
