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The US-Iran military exchange entered its second consecutive day on Thursday with no ceiling in sight. US Central Command confirmed an additional round of strikes against approximately 90 Iranian targets overnight — coastal radar sites, air defense systems, drone and missile storage infrastructure along Iran’s southern provinces including Bushehr, Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, and Sirik. Trump has labeled the strikes “retribution,” a word that carries its own escalatory weight: a war of choice is now a vendetta.
Iran’s response came before dawn. The IRGC’s Aerospace Force announced joint missile and drone attacks on US facilities at four Gulf bases: Arifjan and Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, and Juffair and the Fifth Fleet headquarters at Sheikh Isa in Bahrain. Air-raid sirens in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, sounded for a third time Thursday morning — an AFP correspondent on the ground reported hearing actual explosions. Bahrain’s military said its air defenses “intercepted and destroyed several treacherous Iranian aerial attacks” and urged residents to avoid strange objects on the ground. Qatar reported aerial incidents as well. The IRGC also claimed to have downed a US MQ-9 Reaper drone during the operation — a claim the US has not publicly confirmed. Take that at face value with appropriate skepticism: Iran routinely overclaims.
Iran’s own health ministry — by its own figures, attributed accordingly — reported at least 14 killed and 78 injured in the latest US strikes. Forty-seven remained hospitalized as of Thursday morning. These are Iranian government numbers and cannot be independently verified.
The backdrop is grimly symbolic. All of this is unfolding on the day Iran buries the body of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — killed February 28 in US-Israeli strikes — at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, Iran’s holiest site. Fifteen million people were expected to attend the burial according to Mashhad’s governor. The funeral procession passed through Tehran, Qom, and the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq before returning. The message Tehran is scripting is unmistakable: the Americans are bombing us even as we bury our supreme leader. Whatever the strategic logic of continued strikes, the political and symbolic cost inside Iran — and across the Shia world — is considerable, and Washington does not appear to be pricing that in publicly.
The interlocutors for any renewed peace framework are now effectively mute. The June MOU is in ruins. No diplomatic off-ramp has been announced.
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