Dubai: The United States expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by increasingly hitting bridges, part of President Donald Trump’s threats to start striking civilian infrastructure to pressure Tehran to ease its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran launched new missile attacks against US military bases across the Middle East and warned that its attacks would escalate.
The US military’s Central Command said it hit dozens of targets in its latest airstrikes, which concluded at dawn Friday, the sixth night in a row of American attacks. Officials in southern Iran’s Bandar Abbas reported that civilian infrastructure, including power facilities and a train station, has been hit.
In Qatar, authorities warned the public to take shelter as a barrage of Iranian missiles targeted the largest American base in the Gulf. People heard explosions overhead as air defences fired to intercept the incoming missiles.
Qatar is a key mediator with Pakistan in trying to reach an end to the Iran war. But talks have broken down over Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran earlier targeted American bases in Bahrain and Kuwait in retaliation for US airstrikes hitting bridges in the Islamic Republic overnight.
The ceasefire in Iran war has collapsed
The interim ceasefire agreed to last month has collapsed, and the region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks by the US and Iran as they battle for control of the strait. Iranian officials say US strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others, with new casualties reported in Friday’s strikes.
When the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.
Speaking in a primetime address to the American public, Trump insisted the war was going well.
“We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” Trump said.
Col Ebrahim Zolfaqari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, earlier threatened that Iran could launch widespread attacks on “all the infrastructure in the region” if the US acted on Trump’s repeated warnings that America could hit Iranian bridges and power plants.
“Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extraregional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “This is Iran’s invincible red line.”
US airstrikes hit bridges in Iran
The US airstrikes hit bridges overnight into Friday in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state television reported. The attacks hit Bandar Khamir, a city on Iran’s coast on the Strait of Hormuz.
The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital.
While other routes still are open, the US strikes could expand further, potentially disrupting both the movement of military materiel and goods needed for Iran’s 90 million people.
The US military’s Central Command said it hit dozens of targets in its latest airstrikes, which concluded at dawn Friday, the sixth night in a row of American attacks.
The strikes also collapsed a tower at Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, a key trade route for landlocked, neighboring Afghanistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared the image of the surveillance tower collapsing, part of his effort to assert American control over the strait. That image had circulated social media via activists prior to Hegseth sharing it.
Trump has returned in recent days to his threats to target Iranian power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold on the strait, through which about a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed in peacetime. The US also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.
Week-to-week cargo shipments through the strait dropped by almost a quarter at the beginning of the month, according to Maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence. And that was before the recent surge in tit-for-tat attacks.
Given the risks, some oil shippers are transiting the strait with their location devices turned off, but many are just staying put, Lloyd’s said Thursday. A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait.
US forces have redirected three commercial vessels trying to run the blockade, disabled one that did not comply and boarded another “to ensure full compliance”, the US military’s Central Command said in a post on X.
Trump’s Pressure Strategy
According to an assessment, the United States has struck more than 300 targets across Iran over the past four days, and it is likely that military operations will continue, with critical infrastructure potentially becoming a target in an effort to increase economic pressure, disrupt essential services, and fuel public dissatisfaction.
If this trajectory continues, the conflict could expand beyond military exchanges and generate broader security and economic consequences. As a result, the next 48 to 72 hours are widely assessed as a critical period that may determine the direction and intensity of the confrontation between the two sides.
