For six nights, the United States has been bombing Iran. And for the first time in this cycle, the targets included sites that Iran and local sources say are civilian.
An airport, a railway station, and at least two bridges were hit overnight Thursday in southern Iran, according to Iranian state media and social media accounts. Three people were killed. The strikes hit in and around Bandar Abbas, the major port city that sits at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.
The US military describes its campaign as strikes against “Iranian military capabilities used to threaten vessels” in the strait. CENTCOM said the latest round of attacks was designed to “further degrade Iranian military capabilities.” It has not commented specifically on the airport, bridges, or railway station.
If those sites were in fact civilian infrastructure, the strikes raise a legal question that has followed this conflict from the start. The UN Human Rights chief, Volker Türk, warned earlier this year that deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime under international law. President Trump has been threatening to bomb Iranian bridges and power plants for weeks. On Tuesday he said Iran should return to talks or face the consequences: “They better behave.”
Iranian sources are not neutral in this war, and their claims must be weighed accordingly. But the geography is not in dispute. A railway bridge near Aq Qala in Golestan Province was struck. The airport in the region was hit. Both are far enough from the coastline that they cannot easily be explained away as targeting coastal missile batteries.
Iran’s official casualty count since the strikes resumed is at least 35 civilians killed, according to Middle East Monitor. The US does not publish its own civilian casualty estimates for the campaign.
The strikes have also reached military targets. The GlobalSecurity.org daily update reported that US bombs hit the 388th Mechanized Assault Brigade barracks at Iranshahr, 200 kilometers inland, killing seven soldiers and wounding 13. An IRGC base at Saravan was also hit.
Why this matters now is timing. The Trump administration is weighing an expansion of the operation that could include a ground seizure of Kharg Island, the terminal through which 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports pass. Talk of strikes on Iran’s “Pickaxe Mountain” underground complex is circulating in Washington. The escalation is real.
When a bombing campaign that started on the coast moves inland and hits an airport, a railway station, and bridges, it stops being a “limited” operation. It becomes something else. And whether you call those targets military or civilian depends on who you ask, and on what happens next.