The U.S. military struck bridges and a port facility in southern Iran, Iranian state media reported on Friday, and Middle East nations said they were fending off more attacks by Tehran as the opposing sides escalated their weeklong crisis over the Strait of Hormuz.
The latest American attacks targeted rail and road connections between Iran’s southern port cities and the rest of the country, Iranian state media said, as the U.S. military seeks to degrade Tehran’s ability to choke shipping in the strait. Iranian state media reported that at least six bridges in the southern province of Hormozgan, home to the Bandar Abbas naval base, were hit, citing provincial officials.
Strikes also hit the Bandar Abbas railway station, Iran’s state broadcaster said. Nearby, in Khamir County, six bridges were hit, Iran’s state news agency reported, citing local officials. A control tower at the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman was also destroyed in a strike, according to the state broadcaster.
Eight people were killed and 20 others wounded in the U.S. attacks across Iran, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Friday.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement early Friday that the latest round of American attacks had “hit dozens of Iranian military targets such as coastal surveillance and air defense sites, military logistics infrastructure, and maritime capabilities.” The statement made no mention of civilian infrastructure.
As President Trump strains to find a resolution to a war that has dragged on for more than four months and damaged the global economy, he has threatened to attack civilian infrastructure to try to force Iran’s leaders to make a deal. Such attacks could be considered a war crime.
The United States was “winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” Mr. Trump said during a White House address on Thursday night. He did not elaborate.
The Iranian military said it had retaliated by firing on Middle Eastern countries that host U.S. military facilities, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Syria. Sirens warning of incoming attacks went off on Friday in Bahrain, and Kuwait’s military said that it was intercepting missile and drone strikes launched from Iran. There were no immediate reports of casualties in either country.
Attack drones were also shot down early Friday in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region, according to a statement from the regional counterterrorism force. It did not identify the source of the drones, though Iraqi Kurdistan hosts U.S. forces and has repeatedly come under fire from Iran and Tehran-aligned Iraqi militias since the war began.
A tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Oman, was struck by a projectile on Friday, according to United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a monitoring agency run by the British Navy. The ship reported minor damage and no crew members were harmed, the agency said.
As the U.S.-Iran conflict narrows to the question of control over the strait, a major conduit for the global oil and gas trade, Iran has repeatedly fired on commercial ships that it says are transiting the waterway without authorization. The U.S. military this week resumed enforcement of a blockade of Iranian ports as part of its pressure campaign on Tehran.
Iranian officials have warned that if the United States targets civilian infrastructure, they will retaliate by expanding their attacks. The Iranian authorities also appeared to be trying to prepare the public for further U.S. attacks.
The Iranian Energy Ministry issued a statement, carried by the state broadcaster, asking residents of southern provinces to shut off air-conditioning for an hour during peak periods of use. Temperatures in Bandar Abbas, the capital of Hormozgan Province, were forecast to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming days.
Leily Nikounazar and Erika Solomon contributed reporting.
