US Hits Iran's Bridges and Railway, Tehran Strikes Jordan Base
A sixth straight night of US strikes on Iran targets civilian infrastructure near the Strait of Hormuz for the first time, while Tehran says its missiles answered at a base in Jordan.
- On a sixth straight night of US strikes on Iran, civilian targets were hit for the first time: the Kahurestan and Garive bridges on the Bandar Abbas, Shiraz road, and a railway junction.
- Iranian news agency IRNA and local officials in Khamir report at least two killed and four wounded.
- Strikes were also reported near a military base in Bushehr province, home to Iran's only civilian nuclear plant.
- Tehran says its Revolutionary Guards answered with ballistic missiles at the al-Azraq air base in Jordan.
A war being fought thousands of kilometres from Belgrade this time touches the point that sets the price at Serbian petrol pumps: the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea corridor through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes. On a sixth straight night of US strikes on Iran, overnight into July 17, Washington for the first time targeted civilian infrastructure in the hinterland of that strait, and Tehran promised a response that threatens to spill the war into neighbouring Gulf states.
According to Iranian state media, US strikes hit the Kahurestan and Garive bridges on the highway linking the port of Bandar Abbas with Shiraz, along with a nearby railway junction. In the city of Bandar Abbas itself a communications tower was damaged, while a strike on an airport was reported in the Iranshahr and Semnan area. Iran’s IRNA agency and local authorities in Khamir said at least two people were killed and four wounded, some of them in a residential district close to the railway.
Why is the target now civilian infrastructure?
Over the previous five nights, the US bombing had focused on military targets: command centres, air defence systems, missile and drone launchers, coastal observation posts. The shift to bridges, railways and transport hubs marks a new, sharper turn. It aims not only at Iran’s war machine but at the country’s ability to supply and move people and goods towards the most sensitive stretch of its coast.
The concern deepens because strikes were also reported near a military base in the southern province of Bushehr, home to Iran’s only civilian nuclear power plant. Iran, for its part, claims that one of the strikes landed near a children’s cancer hospital, an assertion Tehran used to frame the escalation as an attack on civilians and to marshal international condemnation.
A response that reaches beyond Iran’s borders
Tehran did not answer with rhetoric alone. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they fired ballistic missiles at the al-Azraq air base in Jordan. Iranian sources speak of two waves and roughly ten missiles, but those figures have not been independently confirmed. Iran’s military also claims to have carried out drone attacks on US facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain, which, if confirmed, would mark the first time the conflict has spilled onto the territory of third Gulf states.
For a European vantage point, Serbia’s included, the danger is not abstract. Every incident in the Strait of Hormuz is instantly mirrored in the global price of oil, and any disruption to Gulf supply pushes energy costs higher from Berlin to Belgrade. Diplomatic channels are silent for now, while a first reaction from the EU High Representative and the Security Council is still awaited.
What was until yesterday a war of military bases has today become a war of bridges, railways and ports, with missiles landing beyond Iran’s borders. Will the strike on civilian infrastructure and the proximity of a nuclear plant force the major powers to pull the brake, or is this merely the prelude to a wider conflict in the Gulf?
