Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that the Israeli military won’t withdraw from Gaza even if Hamas disarms and that he plans to establish three settlements in the area of northern Gaza that the IDF has destroyed.
“We are not retreating from the Yellow Line,” Katz said on Monday during a visit to northern Gaza with reporters from Israel’s Channel 14. “Unequivocally, as long as Hamas does not truly disarm, and even after that, we remain inside of Gaza to bring up three Nahal outposts (military settlements).”
Nahal settlements are a type of Jewish settlement in Israeli-occupied territory that are established by Israeli soldiers with the goal of transitioning them to permanent civilian communities. Katz first vowed in December 2025 that Israel would “never leave” Gaza and would establish Nahala settlements, though he has remained quiet about the plan since then, likely due to international backlash.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a report aired on Monday that the destruction in Gaza, which he described as “the result of a deliberate policy”, “feels good”. pic.twitter.com/4bfytEmzYN— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 14, 2026
In his remarks on Monday, Katz said that a permanent Israeli presence was needed in Gaza to “improve the hold and defense of the communities,” referring to Israeli towns near the Gaza border.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has also recently said that plans have been drawn up for the establishment of three Jewish settlements inside Gaza and that he is just waiting on approval from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Katz also boasted of the destruction of Gaza cities during his visit to the northern part of the Strip. When asked how the view of the destruction made him feel, the Israeli minister said, “I feel good. Thank God. This is all the result of a deliberate policy aimed at removing threats. Instead of the raid method—going in and out—the IDF is inside, the terrorists are outside, and the houses are destroyed.”
Katz’s plans for Gaza go against the US-backed outline for a peace plan for Gaza that was approved by the UN Security Council, and the US has remained silent as Israel continues to constantly violate the ceasefire deal signed in October 2025, which was meant to lead to the implementation of the full peace plan.
Now that Hamas has released all Israeli captives and recovered the bodies of the deceased, Israeli officials try to justify the continued occupation and attacks in Gaza by demanding that Hamas disarm, but the comments from Katz and other Israeli officials reveal that the real goal is permanent occupation.
The former congressman tells Robert Scheer that a provision buried in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act could integrate the United States and Israel at the highest levels of military technology—without meaningful public debate or congressional scrutiny.
Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich has spent decades warning about the machinery of permanent war. But in a new conversation with Robert Scheer, he argues that Congress is now on the verge of crossing a line without precedent in American military history.
At the center of Kucinich’s warning is Section 219 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision he says would formally integrate key areas of U.S. and Israeli military development, including artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, quantum sensing, cyber and electronic warfare, biotechnology, missile defense, drones and directed-energy systems.
“They call it integration, but I call it a merger,” Kucinich tells Scheer.
The implications, he argues, go far beyond traditional military aid or weapons sales. Kucinich warns that the provision could create new counterintelligence risks, deepen U.S. dependence on Israel’s military infrastructure and technology, blur questions of war powers and further entangle Washington in Israel’s expanding regional conflicts.
Even more alarming, Kucinich says, is how little debate the proposal has received. Rather than being considered through a separate treaty or subjected to extensive congressional hearings, the provision has been folded into a massive defense authorization bill that lawmakers will face enormous political pressure to support.
“This provision has been smuggled into the bill,” Kucinich argues. “There’s never been any debate.”
For Scheer, the contradiction is impossible to ignore. At the moment the United States marks 250 years since declaring its independence, Washington may be moving toward an unprecedented military dependence on another state—one whose conduct in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon has placed it at the center of international accusations of genocide and grave violations of international law.
In this urgent edition of Scheer Intelligence, Scheer and Kucinich examine what Section 219 could mean for American sovereignty, constitutional government and the future of war—and why a provision of such consequence has received so little attention from Congress, the Democratic opposition and the mainstream press.
The Strait of Hormuz will never be opened by “war, evil, and American aggression”, the Iranian army’s spokesperson, Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia, was cited as saying by the Tasnim news agency.
The country’s armed forces will not relent over the key waterway, Akraminia added. Respecting the rights of the Iranian people is the only way to open the Strait of Hormuz, he added.
“We are obligated to avenge the blood of the martyrs, especially the martyred leader of the Islamic Revolution,” Akraminia said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday announced what he characterized as a “campaign to dismantle” the International Criminal Court, the Hague-based tribunal tasked with investigating and charging individuals with war crimes and other violations.
In a video posted to social media, Rubio accused the international court of “waging a war against our country—not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts, and the force of so-called international law.” The top American diplomat threatened that the US “will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve.”
The US State Department said in a statement that Rubio’s new campaign against the ICC would “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable” the court’s “ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.” The US is not party to the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that established the ICC.
US President Donald Trump and his subordinates, who have been accused of myriad violations of international law, have adopted an increasingly aggressive posture toward the ICC since taking power last January.
In a February 6, 2025 executive order, Trump declared “a national emergency to address” the purported “threat” posed by the ICC and announced sanctions against court officials, including its judges. The president’s order cited the ICC’s “investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel,” which is also not party to the Rome Statute.
Rubio warned in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that US officials accused of international crimes could be next to face ICC action.
“Border Patrol agents working to remove violent criminals from our country, US Marines risking their lives to restore order in the Western Hemisphere, federal prosecutors working to dismantle terror networks plotting attacks on the American homeland—all would face the constant risk of persecution for the ‘crime’ of defending our country,” Rubio wrote. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”
Raed Jarrar, advocacy director of the human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in response to Rubio’s op-ed that “when the world’s most powerful country aims to dismantle the world’s only permanent international court, it sends the message that the powerful are above the law.”
“It is not the ICC that Rubio is dismantling brick by brick, but the rules-based international order that grew out of the ashes of World War II,” said Jarrar. “Rubio’s attack doesn’t just underscore US hypocrisy, but undermines access to justice across the globe, from Ukraine to Sudan and could amount to obstruction of justice, a crime under the Rome Statute in and of itself.”
In his op-ed, Rubio pointed to DAWN’s call earlier this year for Iran and other Middle East nations to grant the ICC jurisdiction to investigate apparent war crimes committed during the conflict launched in late February by Trump and Netanyahu.
Omar Shakir, DAWN’s executive director, said Monday that Rubio mischaracterized the group’s call as focusing solely on actions by US personnel. That move, said Shakir, “begs the question: Is the secretary of state worried because he knows US personnel committed war crimes in Iran?”
Under Rubio’s plan, the State Department is threatening to impose “increased sanctions against the ICC and affiliated organizations,” hit court personnel with “visa revocations and travel bans,” and pressure other nations that aren’t party to the Rome Statute to “leverage their diplomatic networks to take similar actions alongside” the Trump administration.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch who has demanded international accountability for the Trump administration over its illegal assault on Iran, wrote Monday that Rubio “can’t even make an honest case for attacking the International Criminal Court.”
“He makes it sound like the ICC acts out of the blue anywhere it wants when in fact it acts only against crimes committed on the territory of states that have invited it,” Roth wrote. “He never explains why the United States should be able to commit crimes on the territory of those states with impunity, contrary to the desire of their sovereign governments for an international backstop to reinforce justice for such crimes.”
USS Boxer (LHD 4) and USS Portland (LPD 27) transiting the Indian Ocean, June 30, 2026. . The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit are currently operating in the Middle East. [Photo: US Central Command]
The US military bombed Iran throughout the weekend, striking about 140 targets Saturday night—the largest single barrage of the week—and launching at least two more rounds on Sunday. In all, the Sunday New York Times reported, US forces have struck some 310 targets in Iran over the past week.
Late Friday, US President Donald Trump once again threatened to destroy the entire country in a post on Truth Social. “1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, declaring that the US military stood ready “for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran—PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”
The weekend attacks completed the abrogation of the “ceasefire” Washington and Tehran signed on June 17. “The United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!” Trump wrote Friday.
The “ceasefire” itself marked the failure of the American campaign to overthrow the Iranian government and dominate the Strait of Hormuz. The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote Wednesday that of the four objectives Trump named in March—destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, destroying its navy, denying it a nuclear weapon and cutting off its proxies—“None of these objectives is fully complete.”
Even as Trump sought a temporary negotiated settlement, both factions of the US political establishment condemned it for conceding too much to Iran.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina—who died Saturday at age 71—told CBS’s Face the Nation on June 21: “If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force,” adding, “If Iran contests control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we will obliterate them.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said June 17 that Trump had “offered concession after concession to the Iranian regime for next to nothing in return.”
The attacks continued over the weekend, with Democrats excoriating Trump’s failure to achieve the aims of US imperialism in the Middle East.
Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that “all of the nuclear materials are still there. They’re just buried behind a bunch of rubble.
“The more concerning question, Jake, is the regime survived what the president promised us would be a regime-ending attack on them,” Himes told host Jake Tapper. “By the way, it’s not dust. The president keeps talking about nuclear dust. It’s not dust. This stuff is down there and recoverable.
“So my concern is that, on the backside of this war, Iran is going to be more motivated than they were a year ago to actually produce the weapon that they know will forever take off the table an attack on their country,” he said.
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that Iran had “forced the US to go back into kinetic activity,” and pledged: “We’re a partner, we’re an ally. If the United States calls on us to rejoin kinetic activity against Iran, we’re going to be there for the United States.”
Under the June 17 memorandum, Washington ended the blockade it had thrown around Iran’s ports in April and licensed Iranian oil sales, while Tehran pledged safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, toll-free for 60 days.
US warplanes hit some 80 sites on July 7 and roughly 90 the next day, and the U.S. Treasury canceled the waiver that had let Iran sell its oil. On July 9, US strikes severed the rail line to Mashhad during the burial of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader the United States and Israel assassinated, along with members of his family, in the war’s opening attack.
On Sunday, six ships transited the strait, against more than 130 a day before the war. CNN reported Sunday that the United States has expended half its THAAD interceptors, nearly half its Patriot interceptors and about 30 percent of its Tomahawk cruise missiles—stocks earmarked for a future war with China. Gasoline, at $3.88 a gallon, costs 30 percent more than before the war, and the White House has asked Congress for another $87.6 billion in emergency war spending.
Launched by the United States and Israel on February 28, the war is now in its 135th day. Iranian authorities counted more than 3,400 dead by mid-June, before the past weeks of bombing, and Amnesty International has documented at least 39 political executions and more than 6,000 arrests inside Iran since the war began. The World Bank called the choking of the Strait of Hormuz “the largest oil supply shock on record,” and the International Monetary Fund cited the war’s energy shock this month in cutting its forecast for world growth this year to 3 percent.
The assault on Iran unfolds alongside Israel’s continuing onslaught against Gaza and Lebanon. Gaza’s Health Ministry put the death toll there at more than 73,000 as of July 6. In Lebanon, where a truce nominally took effect June 21, an Israeli drone strike on July 6 murdered a school principal, her mother and two others, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared on July 9 that Israeli troops would remain in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi speaks at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 28, 2026.
(Photo by Murtadha AL-Sudani/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused the Trump administration of “rendering futile all efforts made over the past several months to reduce tensions and restore stability.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday condemned the United States’ latest round of airstrikes as a “flagrant violation” of international law that threatens to permanently derail efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the war, which US President Donald Trump launched earlier this year in coordination with the Israeli government.
This past weekend, said Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the US carried out “brutal attacks” and “acts of aggression” that pose “a serious threat to international peace and security, rendering futile all efforts made over the past several months to reduce tensions and restore stability in the West Asia region.”
On Saturday and Sunday, the US military bombed dozens of targets across Iran, which retaliated with strikes on American military installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, and other Middle East nations. Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused those nations of illegally serving as launch pads for US strikes.
In response to the new wave of bombings, Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, blaming the US for causing “insecurity” in the critical waterway. Trump claimed in an interview on Sunday morning that the strait is “open” after the US “bombed the hell out of” Iran the previous night.
“The US ruling establishment continues its campaign of disinformation and the dissemination of fake news in an attempt to distort the facts and justify its unlawful actions,” said the Iranian Foreign Ministry, accusing the Trump administration of undermining talks between Iran and Oman regarding commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian statement also voiced “regret” over what it described as the head of the United Nations’ “unconstructive approach” to the Trump administration’s “blatant lawlessness and bullying.”
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs underscores the responsibility of the UN secretary-general and the Security Council to address violations of international peace and security,” the statement reads. “It calls for the aggressor parties to be held accountable and for those who ordered and carried out the crimes committed against the Iranian nation to be brought to justice and punished.”
Earlier Sunday, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, voiced concern over the “serious escalation and renewed military confrontations in the Gulf, including the Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the attacks by the United States on Iran, and the attacks by Iran on targets in the neighboring countries.”
“These attacks must all stop,” said Dujarric. “The secretary-general reiterates that a return to full-scale hostilities would have catastrophic consequences—for the peoples of the region, for international peace and security, and for the global economy. He further reaffirms the need for the restoration of full freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”
The military exchanges came less than a month after the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at facilitating a permanent end to the war. Last week, Trump declared the agreement “over” and said negotiations were “a waste of time,” even as the US and Iran agreed to continue talks.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) noted Sunday that “Iran and the United States have once again entered a cycle of direct military confrontation,” adding that “what was presented as an end to the war now appears to have been little more than a temporary pause.”
“The continued evisceration of diplomatic agreements will make any attempt to restore peace extremely difficult,” NIAC argued. “Iran, fresh off new US attacks amid the late supreme leader’s funeral ceremonies, will view any US pivot back to diplomacy with even deeper distrust. US hawks will likewise paint Iran’s actions as the predictable irrationality of radicals, even if US actions have helped trigger Iranian retaliation every step of the way.”
A group of extremist Jewish settlers equipped with US-made M4 rifles detained US lawmaker Ro Khanna and his group during their visit this week to the southern occupied West Bank, the Democratic representative disclosed on 9 July.
“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed; they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” Khanna told Reuters on Thursday.
“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road.” Khanna said, adding, “And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.”
Khanna’s aide, Cameron Kasky, said the delegation was held for over an hour near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet ethnically cleansed by Israeli settlers in 2023, before appealing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem to free them.
Khanna’s visit to the occupied West Bank comes as support for Israel splits Democrats ahead of the US midterm elections in November, with the issue contributing to primary defeats for incumbent lawmakers financed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Israel’s favorability rating among Democratic voters has fallen from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May 2026, according to recent polls.
The US lawmaker’s confrontation with extremist settler groups occurs amid a broader campaign of state-supported settler violence that, by mid-2026, has escalated into systematic ethnic cleansing and land theft in the occupied West Bank.
As of July 2026, illegal settler outposts effectively control 18 percent of the occupied West Bank, following an “unprecedented” expansion directly backed by the Israeli government.
Former Israeli officials have characterized the current escalation as a “systematic campaign” of “Jewish terrorism” intended to facilitate de facto annexation of the Palestinian territories.
An Oxfam analysis based on UN data revealed that since 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 1,244 Palestinians, exceeding the total from the previous 17 years combined, and forcibly displaced nearly 46,000 people.
Over 540 settler attacks were reported in the first quarter of 2026 alone, alongside a record 925 movement obstacles that restrict Palestinian life.
Amnesty International concluded, based on independent investigations, that the Israeli government is implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing, supported by digital evidence, satellite imagery, and field investigations.
Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his Omani counterpart discuss “appropriate mechanisms” for safe passage of ships through Strait of Hormuz during talks in Muscat.
In his first message since the funeral of his father, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has pledged to “avenge [his] innocent blood”, adding that “revenge is the will of our nation”.
Earlier, the US president said 1,000 missiles are “locked and loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran” with thousands more to follow if it tries to assassinate him.
Israeli air attack have hit areas of southern Lebanon.
A massive crowd gathers for funeral prayers for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and members of his family at the Holy Jamkaran Mosque in Qom, Iran, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. [AP Photo/Ahmadreza Taheri]
The Trump administration continued its bombing of Iran for a third day on Thursday, striking the rail lines to Mashhad, as mourners buried Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader assassinated by US and Israeli forces on the first day of the war.
The strikes delayed the burial by eight hours, the Telegraph reported Thursday. Khamenei was laid to rest at the shrine of Imam Reza in the city of his birth, at the end of six days of funeral processions through Iran and Iraq that Iranian state media said drew up to 43 million people. Mourners carried red flags symbolizing revenge and banners reading, “We Will Kill Trump.”
The turnout demonstrated the failure of the American effort to overthrow the Iranian government and subjugate the country by force.
Khamenei, who had served as supreme leader since 1989, was assassinated at the age of 86 on February 28, in a US-Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran. The US and Israel also murdered his daughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.
The strike that murdered Khamenei came in the middle of negotiations, two days after US and Iranian diplomats held nuclear talks in Geneva. To assassinate an adversary under the cover of negotiations is an act of perfidy, illegal under the laws of war.
The Iranian government said US strikes hit a bridge 55 kilometers from Mashhad on Thursday, blocking passenger trains from Tehran, and that cruise missiles struck a second bridge near Aqqala, in Golestan province, on a line that carries the country’s overland trade with Russia and China. The Financial Times reported Thursday that these were “the first attacks on Iranian infrastructure in months.”
On Monday, at the White House, US President Donald Trump said: “We can knock down their bridges in one hour, we can knock out their energy supply.”
The rail strikes followed two nights of heavy bombing. The fighting began Monday, when projectiles struck three commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz—a Qatari gas carrier, a Saudi oil tanker and a third vessel. The US military blamed Iranian forces; Tehran did not claim responsibility.
US warplanes struck more than 80 targets Tuesday night and about 90 more on Wednesday, hitting the ports of Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Konarak and Sirik and, the Iranian government said, the perimeter of the Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr. More strikes took place Thursday night.
The US military said the targets included air defenses, coastal radar, missile and drone depots and more than 60 Revolutionary Guards boats. Iran’s health ministry said the bombing killed 14 people and wounded 78 across five provinces, including three dead at the port of Sirik.
Iranian forces fired missiles and drones at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar and, the Revolutionary Guards said, 10 ballistic missiles at the Azraq air base in Jordan, of which the Jordanian military said it intercepted eight. The price of Brent crude jumped more than 5 percent Wednesday to $78 a barrel, and the United Nations shipping agency urged shipowners to keep their vessels out of the strait, citing the danger to nearly 6,000 sailors in the region.
At a news conference at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, Trump declared the ceasefire over. “To me, I think it’s over,” he said. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.” He called Iran’s leaders “scum,” “sick people” and “evil people,” said “let’s just finish the job.” He threatened to seize Kharg Island, the center of Iran’s oil exports, and to bomb power stations and desalination plants: “We’ll take them out if we have to.”Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones
The ceasefire Trump broke had taken effect June 17. Under it, the United States lifted the naval blockade it had imposed on Iran’s ports in April, and the Iranian government agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz toll-free for 60 days. On Tuesday the U.S. Treasury revoked the waiver permitting Iranian oil exports, the agreement’s central benefit for Tehran.
Congress had twice voted to end the war—the House on June 3, the Senate on June 23—the first war-powers resolution ever to pass both chambers. But the votes were non-binding, and Trump resumed the bombing without the authorization they demanded. Asked what the war had taught him about the limits of his power, he answered, “There are no limits.”
The war on Iran is only one front in a global eruption of imperialist violence. Trump oversaw the attacks from the NATO summit in Ankara, which was given over to expanding wars, above all, against Russia.
At the summit’s arms forum on July 7, NATO advertised more than $50 billion in weapons deals, though the Associated Press reported that no prices were disclosed and that several of the contracts predated the summit. Buyers lined up for Saab’s GlobalEye surveillance planes, Northrop Grumman drones and Airbus tankers, and Britain led a dozen European states and Canada, without the United States, in a $50 billion program to build missiles that can reach Moscow. NATO said financial institutions had “already mobilised $217 billion” for the buildup.
NATO’s leaders cheered the widening war on Russia. They praised Ukraine’s drone strikes deep inside the country, among them the attack on Russia’s largest oil refinery, at Omsk, 2,500 kilometers from Ukraine, which the Financial Times reported this week had cut Russian refining by a fifth to two-fifths. The US bombing of the Iranian rail line belonged to the same offensive. In a single week Washington struck the infrastructure binding together Iran, Russia and China.
At the same time, Israel is continuing its onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon. An Israeli drone murdered at least four people in Lebanon on July 6, among them a school principal and her mother. In Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday Israeli forces would not leave Gaza, Lebanon or Syria.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday released a statement strongly condemning the latest US airstrikes in Iran and said the attacks that allegedly hit two railway bridges were a “blatant war crime.”
Iranian media also reported that a US attack disrupted passenger train traffic between Tehran and Mashhad, a city in eastern Iran that’s the hometown of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Huge crowds have gathered in Mashhad as Khamenei’s body has arrived in the city for his burial.
Photo published by Iran’s PressTV, purporting to show the aftermath of the attack in the northern province of Golestan on July 9, 2026.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that it strongly condemned “the aggressive attacks carried out by the US terrorist military in the early hours of Thursday, July 9, against several locations in the southern coastal provinces, as well as two bridges in the eastern provinces along the railway route to the holy city of Mashhad.”
The ministry said that the attacks “unquestionably constitute a grave war crime.” So far, the US military has neither confirmed nor denied targeting the railway bridges in northeastern Iran. US Central Command claimed that its forces hit 90 targets, including “air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, and military logistics infrastructure along Iran’s coastline.”
Iranian officials have said that the two days of US airstrikes killed 14 Iranian military personnel and civilians and wounded 78 others.
The attacks came after President Trump threatened that he could bomb bridges, energy infrastructure, and desalination plants in Iran. “I would say in one day we could knock down every single bridge in Iran, there’s not a thing they can do about it. Their electric manufacturing facilities … they have desalinization plants, we’ll take them out if we have to. I’d hate to do that. That’s probably the one I’d like to do least,” he said on Wednesday.
(Photo credit: Ammar Awad /Reuters)![Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi [File: Manish Swarup/AP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ap_6a3107ab2fbf0-1781598123.jpg?resize=730%2C410&quality=80)
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