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The U.S. military has reportedly targeted several key railway lines in Iran in strikes on Thursday, with the U.S. unleashing dozens of strikes after President Donald Trump unilaterally declared the ceasefire “over” the day before.
On Thursday, the U.S. struck a railway that connects the capital of Tehran with the city of Mashhad, as well as a railway bridge near the city of Agh Qala in the northeast, according to U.S. media sources, as well as Iranian authorities. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the U.S. also struck two bridges in eastern Iran on Thursday.
The infrastructure attacks mark an escalation by the U.S. The U.S.’s strikes on infrastructure during the first phase of the war were considered particularly dire due to their impacts on civilian life. Trump’s repeated threats to target bridges and power plants in Iran have been considered to be potential war crimes by experts of international law.
The attack on the railway connecting Tehran and Mashhad came just hours before former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was slated to be buried in Mashhad on Thursday, a procession that nevertheless drew massive crowds. Iranian officials said service between the cities had to be suspended due to the attack, and the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways called the strike “a criminal attack.”
The railway struck in the northeast, in Iran’s Golestan province, meanwhile, is a strategically important line that connects the country to China and Russia.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a press release that the military struck 90 targets overnight in Iran, “including air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, and military logistics infrastructure along Iran’s coastline.”
That brings the total number of targets struck in the past two days to over 170, according to CENTCOM. The New York Times reports that this is 14 times the number of targets struck by the U.S. during the last two days of U.S. strikes in June.
Thursday’s strikes come a day after an aggrieved Trump said, at the NATO summit in Turkey, that “I think it’s over” with regard to the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz and the associated costs of its relative closure have continued to be a major sticking point in the negotiations for a permanent end to the war. Traffic in the strait dropped this week after tankers on the Oman side of the passage were struck on Monday.
In addition to the new round of strikes, the U.S. also reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil this week. Iran retaliated against the latest round with attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar on Wednesday and Thursday.
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