US forces have struck Iran for a seventh consecutive night on Friday, hitting bridges, surveillance towers and water infrastructure across the country’s south and prompting Tehran to warn that the widening conflict could soon engulf the entire region.
Officials in Iran’s Hormuzgan reportedly stated that one strike has cut water supply to several towns south of the country, as US President Donald Trump threatened to pressure Tehran to ease its chokehold on the strategic Strait of Hormuz by pounding Iran’s energy supplies.
Iranian officials have said that the renewed US strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds, as new casualties have been reported on Friday. As Iran intensified the attacks on the US-allies Gulf nations in the Middle East, including Qatar and Kuwait, the US military has also acknowledged injuries to the service members.
On Friday, Tehran threatened to resume “full-scale offensive operations” if the US expanded its campaign. Iran’s Major General Mohsen Rezaei warned, “Iran will no longer limit itself to retaliatory, like-for-like responses… and no political border will be safe,” according to state-controlled news agency IRIB
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the latest wave targeted Iranian surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage facilities and maritime capabilities using fighter aircraft, drones and warships, part of what it described as an effort to keep degrading Iranian military capabilities at the direction of the commander in chief.
Water Supplies Cut as Strikes Hit Villages
The strikes have increasingly reached beyond military targets and into the daily lives of Iranian civilians. Missile strikes hit electricity infrastructure and desalination pumps at a pier in the village of Bonji in Jask, in Hormozgan province, according to the Tasnim news agency.
A Hormozgan provincial official said the damage had disrupted drinking water supplies to several villages in the western part of the district, with authorities working to restore services as the scale of the damage was still being assessed. Iran’s energy ministry acknowledged attacks on power infrastructure for the first time on Friday, urging residents in southern provinces already suffering extreme heat to cut back on electricity use.
Officials in Hormozgan also reported that six bridges had been struck along key routes linking the port city of Bandar Abbas with surrounding towns, part of what analysts say is a broader effort to cut off the strategic city from the rest of the country.
Iranian media reported that at least seven people were killed and several more wounded in the latest round of attacks, with explosions also reported on Qeshm Island and in Chabahar, Iranshahr and Bandar-e Khamir.
Tehran Vows the Conflict ‘Will Spread’
Iran responded to the intensifying campaign with retaliatory strikes across the Gulf, with its Revolutionary Guard claiming attacks on US-linked military assets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Syria, including what it said was a strike on an aircraft hangar, fuel tanks and communications infrastructure at the Sheikh Isa airbase.
Kuwait’s military said its air defences intercepted hostile drones, while Jordan’s armed forces said they had shot down ten Iranian missiles without casualties or damage. Bahrain and Qatar both activated air raid sirens as further projectiles were launched toward Gulf states.
Iranian officials framed the expanding retaliation as a warning that the war would not stay contained to Iranian and American targets alone, cautioning that continued strikes on civilian infrastructure risked triggering a far wider and more destructive conflict across the region.
The threats came as President Trump’s earlier warnings to target Iranian infrastructure if Tehran did not return to negotiations appeared to be materialising in full, with the campaign now regularly striking power lines, water systems, railways and airports alongside military sites.
Chabahar Tower Collapses for the Third Time
Among the most striking images to emerge from the night’s strikes was one shared by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on social media, showing a maritime surveillance tower at the port of Chabahar collapsing in a plume of smoke.
Iranian state media confirmed the tower, which oversees commercial traffic at the port on the Gulf of Oman, had been struck for the third time and was destroyed, though Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also operates facilities at the site.
Hegseth captioned the image “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz,” underscoring the campaign’s central aim of asserting American dominance over the vital waterway even as the Pentagon has acknowledged the strait remains only partly open to commercial shipping.
A Widening, More Dangerous Phase
The intensifying exchange follows the collapse of a 60-day negotiation window that Washington and Tehran had agreed to in Switzerland in June, and Iran says at least 38 people have been killed and more than 400 injured in US attacks since those talks began, according to the AFP news agency.
The US State Department has urged Americans to reconsider travel to and through the Middle East, warning in a statement that the security environment remains complex with the potential for unforeseen escalation.
With water and power now joining bridges and military installations on the target list, and Tehran signalling it may broaden its own retaliation, the conflict appears to be entering a more dangerous and unpredictable phase, one in which the line between military and civilian targets is growing harder to define by the day.
