American warplanes destroyed a key bridge and a maritime control tower in southern Iran on Friday as the United States carried out its sixth consecutive night of strikes in the renewed campaign against Tehran.
Iranian state media reported that at least seven people were killed. The strikes hit infrastructure that the US says is used to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, but the targets are moving further inland and the definition of “military” is becoming harder to sustain.
The maritime control tower at Chabahar port, Iran’s only deep-water ocean port on the Gulf of Oman, was struck for a third time and completely destroyed, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency. The tower had been hit twice before since the campaign resumed. Video geolocated by CNN showed visible damage to the structure immediately after the latest strike. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared imagery of the tower collapsing.
Chabahar is strategically significant. It sits on the northern shore of the Gulf of Oman near the Pakistan border and gives Iran a maritime route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz entirely. India has invested heavily in the port as a gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia through the International North-South Transport Corridor. Striking its control tower degrades Iran’s ability to manage vessel traffic into and out of the Gulf of Oman.
The bridge strikes are equally significant. Multiple bridges in southern Iran were hit, including railway bridges that carry supply lines and civilian traffic. These are the same kind of targets President Trump threatened to bomb before the renewed campaign began, and now he is following through.
“These are designed to further degrade Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM said in a statement.
But bridges and port control towers are not missile batteries. They are infrastructure. The distinction between military and civilian targets is collapsing as the bombing campaign expands. The US has now hit an airport, a railway station, a maritime control tower, and at least four bridges in this cycle alone.
Trump has suggested he wants to seize Kharg Island, the terminal through which 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports pass, and has hinted that “other people” will handle the ground campaign. He has also threatened to strike Iran’s power plants if Tehran does not return to talks. Each new night of strikes widens the target set.
Six nights into the renewed campaign, the strategy is clearer than it was on night one. The US is systematically dismantling Iran’s ability to monitor, control, and supply its coastline. Bridges cut supply routes. The Chabahar tower blinds Iran’s maritime surveillance. Coastal defenses have been hit. Cruise missile sites have been destroyed.
What the strategy does not yet include is an exit. Iran has declared the ceasefire deal dead. Its negotiator says the conflict is “existential.” The IRGC threatens to close other routes. And every night the US hits more targets, the question of how this stops, as opposed to how it escalates, gets harder to answer.