Archive for July, 2026
CENTCOM announced Thursday night that they completed another wave of strikes against Iranian military targets.
U.S. forces launched a series of “precision munition” strikes from fighter jets, drones and warships for the sixth night in a row, CENTCOM said in an X post.
At least one child was injured by shrapnel in Qatar during interception operations on Friday local time, according to the Qatar Interior Ministry.
The ministry said in an X post that the child is receiving “necessary medical care.”
Iran claims it targeted a U.S. military base in eastern Syria on Friday, which would be the first known attack by Iranian forces on Syrian territory since the U.S. and Israel jointly launched a war against Iran earlier this year.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it carried out a “surprise attack” on a U.S. special operations command center at al-Tanf near Syria’s southeastern borders with Iraq and Jordan in response to the killing of Iranian soldiers in the southeastern Iranian city of Iranshahr, according to Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB. ABC News cannot independently verify the claim.
In February, the U.S. military said it had completed a withdrawal from the so-called al-Tanf Garrison, which “was a key base along a southern highway that was a main smuggling route for Iranian weapons flowing into Syria and particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
U.S. Central Command released video of a U.S. airstrike that it says destroyed a port surveillance tower that has been used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “to track and target commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
Iran has previously described the tower as a civilian structure.
“On July 16, U.S. forces successfully destroyed the Chah Bahar Shahid Kalantari Port surveillance tower, part of a maritime surveillance network along Iran’s Gulf of Oman coastline used for decades by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to track and target commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM said.
“The destruction of the tower directly degrades IRGC’s ability to coordinate attacks on innocent civilian crew members. Furthermore, the strike protects freedom of navigation in regional waters for all vessels, except for ships attempting to violate the ongoing U.S. naval blockade against Iran,” CENTCOM said.
The U.S. announced another round of strikes on Iran on Friday for the seventh consecutive night, according to U.S. Central Command.
“The strikes are designed to continue degrading Iranian military capabilities at the Commander in Chief’s direction,” CENTCOM said.
The U.S. also redirected four commercial vessels, disabled one and boarded on in its naval blockade on Iran, CENTCOM said.
Former IRGC commander Maj. Gen. Mohsen Rezaei said in an interview with Iranian state media on Friday that if the U.S. continues its military actions against Iran, Tehran will move to an offensive position rather than a retaliatory one.
“If America continues the war in the coming days, Iran will move from the phase of retaliation to the offensive phase, and we declare that the conditions for both negotiations and war are over,” the general said.
The IRGC general further stated Washington had violated all five preliminary clauses of the MoU, and that the “prediction that Donald Trump would tear up the memorandum of understanding came true.”
Fars News Agency also reports the general saying if America continues the war in the next two to three days, Iran will enter the stage of “full-scale assault and annihilation.”
Kuwait’s military said on Friday that several members of its ground forces were wounded, and military and civilian facilities were damaged after what it described as an Iranian attack involving ballistic missiles and drones.
A Defense Ministry spokesperson said the armed forces had detected hostile ballistic missiles and drones in Kuwaiti airspace since dawn on Friday and had intercepted and dealt with them.
The military also said several vital civilian facilities were hit, including a power generation and water desalination station, causing a fire and damage to parts of the facility and electricity generation units.
It said debris also fell in several locations across the country, causing material damage but no civilian casualties.
Earlier on Friday, Kuwait Fire Force said via X that firefighters had extinguished two fires that broke out at separate sites in the south of the country after the locations were struck in “hostile” Iranian attacks.
Iran claimed Friday that the U.S. struck a railroad station and civilian airport.
In response, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command said the U.S. does not strike at civilians.
“The US military never targets civilians unlike Iran which has repeatedly attacked innocent mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz and civilians in neighboring gulf countries,” according to Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesman.
In the recent wave of airstrikes CENTCOM has acknowledged U.S. forces have struck at military infrastructure facilities.
The distinction being that the U.S. may see facilities that Iran says are civilian in nature, but that CENTCOM says are being used by the IRGC to target shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. forces completed a seventh consecutive night of strikes against Iran, U.S. Central Command announced in a social media post.
The strikes concluded at 9:30 p.m. ET after the U.S. hit surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage and maritime capabilities, CENTCOM said in the statement.
“CENTCOM continues to hold Iran accountable at the Commander in Chief’s direction while fully enforcing a naval blockade against Iranian ports,” the CENTCOM statement said. “More than 50,000 American service members are operating across the Middle East and remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.”
President Donald Trump announced “major combat operations” against Iran on Feb. 28, with massive joint U.S.-Israeli strikes targeting military, government and infrastructure sites.
Delegations from the U.S. and Iran entered negotiations in June aimed at a war-ending deal based on a memorandum of understanding signed by both countries.
The U.S. and Iran have nonetheless continued to exchange relatively limited strikes despite the signing of the memorandum and amid the continuation of peace talks, with the strategic Strait of Hormuz the primary flashpoint.
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