Truthout77%
US Bombs Iran’s Civilian Infrastructure as Trump Threatens Power Plants, Bridges 79%
By Sharon Zhang85%
7/17/2026, 5:06:39 PM
Topics: Geopolitics, Military Conflict
Keywords: Iran, Donald Trump, Strait Of Hormuz, War Crimes, War, Civilian Infrastructure, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Houthis, Kuwait
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Unattributed Quote, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 28.8% saturation with 159 hits. Analysis detected 1,233 faulty-reasoning hits from 553 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 71.2% and a BS Rank of 79% (3,830 of 17,611 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 78.30% of the article peer group.
The U.S. has struck more civilian infrastructure in southern Iran in its sixth consecutive day of attacks on Friday, including key bridges and a tower at a crucial port.
Iranian officials reported that U.S. forces struck several key railway and highway bridges overnight on Friday.
The attacks “appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas,” a critical port city that hosts Iran’s Naval headquarters, from Tehran and the rest of the central part of the country, the Associated Press reported.
The U.S. has also hit Bandar Abbas directly in strikes this week.
Officials said that six bridges in the province were targeted.
Video footage shows several bridges being reduced to rubble.
The strikes killed seven people.
Local officials have also reported U.S. strikes on power infrastructure, causing power outages and a call from Iran’s energy ministry to save power in the southern part of the country.
Al Jazeera reports that 200 patients at a hospital in southwestern Iran were evacuated after the facility was rendered inoperable due to nearby strikes.
The U.S. also collapsed a maritime traffic control tower at the key port of Chabahar, which helped coordinate traffic for fishing vessels and trade around the Gulf of Oman.
U.S.
Central Command claimed the tower was “used for decades by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to track and target commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” though Iranian officials said the tower was “a completely civilian structure.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared a picture on X seemingly showing the strike on the tower, while reposting an earlier post that said: “Iran does not control the [Strait of Hormuz].”
CENTCOM has denied reports from earlier this week that the U.S. hit a wheat storage facility in Iran.
CENTCOM also did not acknowledge strikes on civilian infrastructure in its statement on the latest round of strikes on Friday, only saying that the U.S. had “hit dozens of Iranian military targets.”
The strikes are yet another escalation in a war that the U.S. swiftly intensified after President Donald Trump unilaterally declared that the ceasefire was over last week.
Iran has continued to retaliate against the U.S. strikes with attacks in Kuwait, whose government reported damage to a water plant on Friday, and other surrounding countries that host the U.S. military.
Reuters reported this week that Iran has told the Houthis to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, at the opening of the Red Sea, if the U.S. attacks Iranian power infrastructure.
This would even further roil the world economy, already heavily disrupted by Iran’s restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
However, it’s unclear to what extent that power infrastructure must be destroyed in order for this plan to go into effect.
The Reuters report comes after Trump again threatened this week to destroy all of Iran’s power infrastructure and bridges next week if the two parties don’t strike a deal.
This would have disastrous effects for the roughly 90 million people who live in Iran, and could constitute a war crime.
“Next week it gets really bad for them,” the president said in an interview with Fox News.
“We’re going to knock out all their power plants.
We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
Analysis
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