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The conflict has been escalating since US President Donald Trump declared 10 days ago that the peace deal with Iran is over.
Iran says at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 injured in strikes by the United States this month, as an Iranian negotiator says their memorandum of understanding (MoU) is effectively “suspended” amid US violations.
On Saturday, Iran’s Health Ministry reported the number of casualties from attacks since July 6 , hours after the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) launched a seventh consecutive night of raids on targets across Iran.
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They left 10,000 people without water after a desalination plant was hit, Iran said. Tehran retaliated by launching another wave of drones and missiles at US-allied Gulf states.
“The US has violated and suspended all its commitments within the framework of the Islamabad MoU,” said Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, in comments reported by the Fars news agency on Saturday.
As a result, Tehran has “likewise suspended all our own commitments” and implementation of the agreement and is “busy defending the country”, he added, who took part in technical talks on the agreement earlier this month.
Gharibabadi’s statement appears to snap another fragile thread as the war shows no end in sight. Meanwhile, the battle over the Strait of Hormuz is intensifying, the global economy is on high alert and widening strikes threaten civilians and services, including desalination plants for drinking water.
Civilian infrastructure targeted
A seawater pumping station and a power transformer at the Bunji desalination plant in Jask in southern Iran were “completely destroyed” in the latest US strikes, depriving 20 villages of water, the chief executive of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company, Hamzeh Pour, was quoted by Iran’s Tasnim news agency on Saturday as saying.
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 started by the strikes, the firefighting force said.
Air raid sirens also sounded repeatedly in Bahrain, where authorities urged residents to seek shelter.
In Jordan, authorities said they intercepted 10 Iranian ballistic missiles.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said its naval forces 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 and destroyed two US fighter jets.
The Iranian attacks came after CENTCOM announced it had carried out another wave of overnight strikes targeting “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage and maritime capabilities” in Iran.
MoU ‘over’
US President Donald Trump declared at the NATO summit in Ankara 10 days ago that the MoU 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 sanctions waiver on Iranian oil exports.
Iran insists that under the interim peace deal agreed with the US, it has the right to control shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and dictate which routes ships should take when transiting the vital channel for global energy exports.
Trump says the strait must be open to all traffic – but the US Navy is again blockading Iranian vessels.
Trump is in a rush to reduce 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.
Pictures published by Iranian state media show heavily damaged bridges and rail lines in the 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.
