TEHRAN, Iran – Days of U.S. military offensives across Iran are the heaviest shelling since the two countries reached a vague memorandum of understanding last month.
U.S. warplanes and warships have hit hundreds of military targets and many civilian targets in nearly a week of strikes, and Iranian authorities have reported attacks in at least 10 provinces, mainly in southern Iran near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
More than 10 million people in Tehran are living a near-normal life as the capital has not been attacked recently. But more than four months after the United States and Israel launched airstrikes, the economy is in decline and the outlook is increasingly uncertain.
Farshad, 21, from east Tehran, said on Sunday: “Everything is too chaotic right now to guess what will happen next, but things don’t look good.”
“I sincerely hope that a full-scale war does not start again, especially because we do not have the guts to bomb every day,” he told Al Jazeera.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) announced overnight on Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz was deemed to be closed again due to US military intervention. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards added that two ships were attacked after choosing to transit via the Western-backed southern passage near Oman rather than the Iranian-designated route north of the strait.
Iran also said it responded to the U.S. attack by attacking U.S. interests across the region, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar and Oman, as prospects for negotiations in lieu of military escalation remain slim.
Nastaran, another Tehran citizen, said he felt the overnight escalation was worse than previous attacks.
“When I picked up my phone to check the news this morning, I didn’t expect it to be this bad,” she said. “I think there will be more attacks soon.”
Growing US aggression
The US military has escalated its attacks over the past week.
U.S. Central Command said more than 300 military targets were attacked in the three waves, including coastal surveillance, logistics and communications, as well as missiles, drones and naval assets. Attacks for civilian purposes are not permitted.
As with other flare-ups in recent weeks, a number of attacks have also been launched in Hormozgan province, including the main port city of Bandar Abbas, as well as Siri, Qeshm and Jask, overlooking the strait. Ports, fishing, coastal management infrastructure and air defense facilities were widely bombed, with one soldier reportedly killed and several fishermen injured in separate attacks.
U.S. projectiles have also targeted multiple areas in Bushehr province, with one attack impacting the area around Iran’s only nuclear power plant without damaging it.
Officials in the southwestern province of Khuzestan said three regions were affected, but the capital Ahvaz was not affected. Local authorities in Kogilye, Boyer Ahmad and Lorestan provinces also reported projectile attacks.
In Sistan and Baluchestan in the southeast, attacks were also reported in Chabahar, Konark and Iranshahr, where a firefighter was killed in an attack on airport facilities. A video recorded by a Chabahar local and shared online showed the city’s famous maritime control tower being destroyed.
Over the past week, US forces have carried out their deepest assault on Iranian territory since a ceasefire agreed in April halted full-scale military operations.
One of these was in the northern province of Golestan, where the Ak Teke Khan railway bridge on the Gorgan-Ince-Born line was hit.
Officials said the bridge, which carries both passengers and cargo, was repaired and service resumed soon. But the attack showed that the inland corridor could also be targeted to increase pressure on Iran by restricting trade, including imports of essential goods.
This transport route connects Iran to Turkmenistan with the railway networks of Kazakhstan, Russia, China and Eurasia. Significantly, the US provided an alternative land route through the Strait of Hormuz while imposing a naval blockade on Iran’s southern ports.
Last week, as assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was being buried in his hometown of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, authorities said the United States crashed a bridge about 55 kilometers (34 miles) from the city, disrupting the movement of passengers on their way to the funeral procession.
Iranian officials say their power infrastructure, which President Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack, has also been severely affected since the war began, exacerbating a long-running energy crisis.
The attack, which came just as summer temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) this week, reduced Iran’s power generation capacity by about 4,200 megawatts, Mohammad Aladad, president of Tavanir, the state-run parent company for running Iran’s electricity grid, said on Sunday.
After Ali Khamenei’s funeral, a statement by Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader who succeeded his father and has not appeared in public, emphasized the need for revenge.
Similar messages continue to be broadcast by state media and religious hardliners who support the Islamic Republic, who on Sunday celebrated the death of U.S. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. State television praised the “deployment to hell” of pro-war hawkish politicians.
Meanwhile, Israel has effectively nullified the memorandum of understanding signed between Iran and the United States on June 17 by moving deeper into southern Lebanon and signaling its readiness to return to military strikes against Iran.
Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, who threatened to assassinate Mojtaba Khamenei, appeared on an Israeli program on Saturday night and said that “southern Lebanon will become Gaza” and that the Israeli military would “apply the Rafah model” to conquest there.
