U.S. Hits Iran; Trump Pronounces MOU Dead, Says More Attacks Tonight; Iran Warns American Allies
U.S. forces struck more than 80 targets in Iran yesterday to retaliate for what appeared to be Iran’s attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
As well, the Treasury Department revoked Iran’s license to sell oil on the global market.
For its part, Iran claimed to have hit 85 American targets across the region.
U.S. President Donald Trump said the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that ended hostilities is likely dead.
Strikes in Strait
The most recent trouble began with strikes against ships in the Strait of Hormuz from Sunday, July 5, through yesterday, July 7.
On Sunday, United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported that “A cargo vessel has triggered a distress alert stating that they are under attack by unknown armed assailants.” The attack was 30 nautical miles southwest of Al Hudaydah, Yemen.
UKMTO issued two alerts on Monday:
[In an incident] 8NM east of Limah, Oman … [a] tanker has reported being hit by an unknown projectile on the port side causing a fire, whilst travelling southbound [and]
A tanker transiting the Strait of Hormuz … was struck by an unidentified projectile and is believed to have structural damage.
Yesterday, UKMTO reported that a “tanker was struck by an unknown Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and has sustained minor structural damage.”
Thus did U.S. forces begin more air raids “to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced when bombing began:
The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
CENTCOM elaborated later that U.S. aircraft struck more than 80 targets, including
Iranian air defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, and more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait to degrade Iran’s ability to continue attacking international commerce flowing through the international trade corridor.
The three vessels Iran attacked were the “Marshall Islands-flagged M/T Al Rekayyat, Saudi Arabia-flagged M/T Wedyan, and Liberian-flagged M/T Cyprus Prosperity,” CENTCOM continued.
Citing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Israel’s I24 News reported that Iran “launched a large-scale missile and drone operation targeting 85 U.S. military sites and facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait, describing the attacks as retaliation for overnight American strikes on Iranian territory.”
The Iranians claimed their anti-aircraft batteries knocked down a “US MQ-9 Reaper drone over southern Iran.”
Kuwait reported intercepting 15 Iranian projectiles today.
On Tuesday, the Treasury Department revoked Iran’s General License X, which it had granted on June 21, with Iran-Related General License X1.
Iran Says U.S. Violated MOU
Responding to the U.S. air raid, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the “terrorist U.S. military, in a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations, carried out military aggression against several monitoring and surveillance centers along Iran’s southern coast.”
The attacks were a “blatant breach” of the MOU, which ceased military attacks by both nations.
The ministry also warned American allies in the region not to cooperate with U.S.-Israeli operations:
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again calls upon all governments, particularly the neighboring countries located along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, to prevent the aggressor parties from using their territory and facilities to carry out hostile acts against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Ministry emphasizes that any form of cooperation in facilitating aggression against Iran shall be regarded as complicity and participation in the crime. …
The powerful Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have repeatedly demonstrated their determination to defend the country’s territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and national security against U.S. aggression in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. They will not hesitate to target both the source and the perpetrators of any act of aggression.
The head of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that Iran won’t “fold.”
Listing “Major MOU Violations by the US,” he wrote on X:
Violating Iranian adjustments in the Strait
Persistent threats of further strikes
Reinstating oil sanctions
Attacks on southern Iran [and]
Continued Zionist aggression on [Lebanon]
The era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We don’t fold.
Trump: MOU Over
Speaking in Turkey, where he attended a NATO summit, Trump said the MOU is canceled.
“To me, I think it’s over,” he said, answering a reporter’s question:
I don’t want to deal with them. They’re scum. You know what scum is. They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people. They’re vicious, violent people.
Trump said not only that the U.S. might reimpose its blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, but also that U.S. forces might attack again tonight.
“There may be a big attack and it will knock out a lot of stuff,” he said.
Before a meeting with Ukrainian dictator and global grifter Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump said the U.S. forces “very, very probably will hit [Iran] hard again tonight.”
Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Joe Kent said the U.S. should quit the war.
“The problem is that we signed the MOU because there was no military solution & we needed the [Strait of Hormuz] open,” Kent wrote on X:
Our best option is to just walk away.
If we walk Iran has no justification for targeting ships & we can use sanctions relief as our carrot, as opposed to risking a larger war in these ineffective tit for tat strikes.
Former GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was rather more voluble.
“We are back to bombing Iran during the ceasefire for the Iran war that is not a war because Iran bombed a vessel for crossing the Strait of Hormuz that they don’t control yet apparently control,” she wrote on X:
Not sure how they bombed the vessel because we have totally and completely obliterated their military and beat them in the war that is not a war like 40 times now.
I’m so glad that Trump ran for president to end forever foreign wars otherwise I might start thinking this war that is not a war that we won like 40 times is starting to turn into another forever foreign war in the Middle East.
Good thing Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Department of Defense, I mean War, is headed to Israel to take orders from, I mean ask for advice, on how to totally wipe out Iran, I mean bring peace.
I’m totally sure no one in the executive branch or donors will do any sort of insider trading based on super duper secret military decisions.
You know the kind based on intelligence that Congress is going to fuse with Israel’s military after they all vote to pass the National Defense (war) Authorization Act.
Because this is exactly what we all voted for when we said Make America Great Again.
The war with Iran on Israel’s behalf is a main reason Greene and Tucker Carlson have left the GOP and are planning to build a third party.
