List of Critical Sites Struck In Major US Attack On Iran
Newsweek · C · trust 62/100
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. A number of critical sites were hit in Iran and other countries in the Middle East, as the United States and Iran exchanged blows aimed at infrastructure and military targets on Saturday.
The region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks in a conflict increasingly focused on control of the Strait of Hormuz, an essential waterway that carries a fifth of the world’s crude oil. The collapse of an interim ceasefire leaves no clear end in sight for the war that the U.S. and Israel began more than four months ago.
The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said early on Saturday that its seventh straight night of strikes had hit “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.”
The most significant damage on Saturday occurred in Kuwait after Iran struck a water desalination plant and an oil facility, according to the Kuwait authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. The strikes injured several people at the oil facility and caused a fire at the desalination plant, forcing several power generation units offline.
Iran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic after the war started February 28. That sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran significant leverage in negotiations.
Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should pay fees to Tehran—even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway.
President Donald 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 U.S. also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.
On Tuesday, Trump had warned that the U.S. would "knock out" Iran's power plants and bridges "unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
"Next week, it gets really bad for them," he added in a Fox News interview that aired late Tuesday. "I'll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we'll hit energy targets.”
A spokesperson for Iran’s IRGC said earlier this week that Tehran would respond to any U.S. attacks on Iran's critical infrastructure by hitting "all the infrastructure still standing in the region," the country's IRNA state news agency reported .
On Saturday, the IRGC warned that countries hosting U.S. forces should be “prepared to receive a corresponding response.”
Iranian media outlets reported the IRGC’s statement, which said: "From yesterday, the enemy adopted a new approach, committing war crimes to hide its defeat in military confrontation—destructive attacks on hospitals, bridges, railways, airports, ports, telecommunications centres and the like, and the killing of civilians.”
It added: "Countries that host the aggressor American military and have placed their land at the disposal of the aggressor criminals for attacks on Iran should be prepared to receive a corresponding response, and should activate their civil defence units to safeguard the lives of their citizens and move them away from likely targets."
Iranian authorities said at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes in the past three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge on Friday.
U.S. officials acknowledged 13 additional U.S. service members—10 Army soldiers and three Navy sailors—had been injured since Monday, but offered no further details. Since the war began, 14 U.S. service members have been killed and 427 wounded.
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