Overnight U.S. airstrikes have heavily damaged critical infrastructure in Iran, including a major highway near the Strait of Hormuz and a planned nuclear power plant construction site, marking a sharp escalation in an eight-day military campaign over control of the strategic waterway.
According to Iran's state-run news agency, the overnight strikes destroyed a bridge and two tunnels, severely disrupting one of the primary highways leading toward Bandar Abbas, a key port city located near the narrowest point of the Strait of Hormuz. Visual evidence from southern Iran's Hormozgan province on Saturday, July 18, 2026, showed residents standing near a destroyed bridge and an overturned vehicle on a ruined section of the road.
The U.S. military's Central Command confirmed the operations, stating that its forces targeted "Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities and missile and drone storage sites." The military released footage showing fighter jets and sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles carrying out the attacks, with at least one target situated in a mountain valley where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) frequently conceals its missile bases. Central Command stated the actions were designed to degrade Iran's ability to control the Strait of Hormuz and to "swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces," which control the nation's ballistic missile arsenal.
Early Sunday morning, U.S. forces also targeted the construction site of the planned Darkhovin Nuclear Power Plant in southwest Iran, according to the country's atomic energy agency and state television. Satellite imagery from Planet Labs PBC dated July 9 showed earth-clearing activities but very little actual construction at the site. There is no known radiological material at the location, which had not been previously identified as a target during the war.
The offensive follows a deadly Iranian attack on a base in Jordan that killed two American service members, left one missing, and hospitalized four others. Since the broader conflict began, 16 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 430 have been wounded.
As the conflict intensifies, neighboring Gulf nations are being drawn deeper into the crisis. Kuwait announced on Saturday that its air defense systems successfully intercepted and downed incoming Iranian missiles. On Sunday morning, both Kuwait and Bahrain activated their air defenses again to counter incoming Iranian drones and missiles. Iran's retaliatory strikes have previously targeted power and desalination plants in Kuwait, threatening daily life in the desert nation, which relies on desalination for approximately 90% of its drinking water.
While Iran has refrained from striking Israel—which has remained out of this round of fighting—and the United Arab Emirates, threats against the UAE have escalated. The semiofficial Iranian news agency Fars, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, quoted an anonymous official warning that if civilian infrastructure in Iran continues to be targeted, "the airports of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as the ports of Fujairah and Jebel Ali, must be immediately evacuated."
In response to the threat, the UAE Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling "for exercising the utmost restraint in order to avoid dangerous repercussions and the region being pulled into new levels of violence and instability." Historically, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have launched retaliatory airstrikes against Tehran when their own nations were targeted.
The secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, has accused Iran of committing war crimes by targeting civilian facilities and infrastructure. While international humanitarian law generally protects civilian infrastructure like bridges and power plants, such sites can lose protection if utilized for military purposes, provided any retaliatory strike is proportionate and minimizes civilian harm.
The current military campaign aligns with previous threats to target Iranian power stations and bridges to force Tehran to yield control of the Strait of Hormuz, a channel through which one-fifth of all globally traded oil and natural gas passes in peacetime. In tandem with the airstrikes, the U.S. has reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt crude oil shipments, with the military reporting Saturday that it had redirected five vessels and disabled one since the blockade began.
Iran's joint military command has condemned the operations, warning that U.S. "covetousness, bullying, totalitarianism or brutality" would be met with a "devastating response."
