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The conflict has been escalating since US President Donald Trump declared ۱۰ days ago that the peace deal with Iran is over.
Published On ۱۸ Jul ۲۰۲۶
A seventh consecutive night of attacks by United States forces on targets across Iran has left ۱۰,۰۰۰ people without water after a desalination plant was hit, with Iran retaliating by launching another wave of drones and missiles at US-allied Gulf states.
Hamzeh Pour, chief executive of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company, was quoted by the Tasnim news agency on Saturday as saying that a seawater pumping station and a power transformer at the Bunji desalination plant in Jask in southern Iran were “completely destroyed”, depriving ۲۰ villages of water.
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Iran’s retaliation also targeted civilian infrastructure, a war crime under international humanitarian law.
In the early hours of Saturday, Kuwait announced the closure of its airspace and said two power and water desalination plants were hit by Iranian attacks. Several Kuwaiti firefighters were wounded while responding to a fire sparked by the strikes, the country’s firefighting force said.
Air raid sirens also sounded repeatedly in Bahrain, where authorities urged residents to seek shelter.
In Jordan, authorities said they intercepted ۱۰ Iranian ballistic missiles.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said its naval forces had targeted a US military fuel pier at Kuwait’s al-Ahmadi port and a US warplane assembly site at Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base. The IRGC also said it attacked a US base in Azraq in Jordan, claiming to have destroyed two American fighter jets.
The Iranian attacks came after the US military’s Central Command, or CENTCOM, announced it had carried another wave of overnight strikes targeting “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities” in Iran.
US President Donald Trump declared at the NATO summit in Ankara ۱۰ days ago that a memorandum of understanding signed in mid-June by Washington and Tehran was “over” following Iranian attacks on tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. He reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and revoked a waiver of sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
Iran insists that under the interim peace deal agreed with the US, it has the right to control maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and dictate which routes ships should take when transiting the narrow waterway – a vital channel for global energy exports.
Trump says the strait must be open to all traffic – but the US Navy is now blockading Iranian vessels.
Trump is in a rush to push down oil and gas prices ahead of crucial midterm elections in November. But his repeated threats and attacks on Iran have so far failed to persuade Tehran to surrender to his terms or even to return to negotiations.
US attacks have expanded in scope and intensity over the past week. Tehran has accused Washington of targeting civilian infrastructure and committing war crimes.
Footage and images published by Iranian state media show heavily damaged bridges and railway lines in the country’s south. Iranian officials warned the country would respond in kind by striking civilian infrastructure across the Gulf region, as they have now done in their attacks on Kuwait.
