The Trump administration continued its bombing of Iran for a third day on Thursday, striking the rail lines to Mashhad, as mourners buried Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader assassinated by US and Israeli forces on the first day of the war.
The strikes delayed the burial by eight hours, the Telegraph reported Thursday. Khamenei was laid to rest at the shrine of Imam Reza in the city of his birth, at the end of six days of funeral processions through Iran and Iraq that Iranian state media said drew up to 43 million people. Mourners carried red flags symbolizing revenge and banners reading, “We Will Kill Trump.”
The turnout demonstrated the failure of the American effort to overthrow the Iranian government and subjugate the country by force.
Khamenei, who had served as supreme leader since 1989, was assassinated at the age of 86 on February 28, in a US-Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran. The US and Israel also murdered his daughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.
The strike that murdered Khamenei came in the middle of negotiations, two days after US and Iranian diplomats held nuclear talks in Geneva. To assassinate an adversary under the cover of negotiations is an act of perfidy, illegal under the laws of war.
The Iranian government said US strikes hit a bridge 55 kilometers from Mashhad on Thursday, blocking passenger trains from Tehran, and that cruise missiles struck a second bridge near Aqqala, in Golestan province, on a line that carries the country’s overland trade with Russia and China. The Financial Times reported Thursday that these were “the first attacks on Iranian infrastructure in months.”
On Monday, at the White House, US President Donald Trump said: “We can knock down their bridges in one hour, we can knock out their energy supply.”
The rail strikes followed two nights of heavy bombing. The fighting began Monday, when projectiles struck three commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz—a Qatari gas carrier, a Saudi oil tanker and a third vessel. The US military blamed Iranian forces; Tehran did not claim responsibility.
US warplanes struck more than 80 targets Tuesday night and about 90 more on Wednesday, hitting the ports of Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Konarak and Sirik and, the Iranian government said, the perimeter of the Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr. More strikes took place Thursday night.
The US military said the targets included air defenses, coastal radar, missile and drone depots and more than 60 Revolutionary Guards boats. Iran’s health ministry said the bombing killed 14 people and wounded 78 across five provinces, including three dead at the port of Sirik.
Iranian forces fired missiles and drones at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar and, the Revolutionary Guards said, 10 ballistic missiles at the Azraq air base in Jordan, of which the Jordanian military said it intercepted eight. The price of Brent crude jumped more than 5 percent Wednesday to $78 a barrel, and the United Nations shipping agency urged shipowners to keep their vessels out of the strait, citing the danger to nearly 6,000 sailors in the region.
At a news conference at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, Trump declared the ceasefire over. “To me, I think it’s over,” he said. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.” He called Iran’s leaders “scum,” “sick people” and “evil people,” said “let’s just finish the job.” He threatened to seize Kharg Island, the center of Iran’s oil exports, and to bomb power stations and desalination plants: “We’ll take them out if we have to.”
The ceasefire Trump broke had taken effect June 17. Under it, the United States lifted the naval blockade it had imposed on Iran’s ports in April, and the Iranian government agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz toll-free for 60 days. On Tuesday the U.S. Treasury revoked the waiver permitting Iranian oil exports, the agreement’s central benefit for Tehran.
Congress had twice voted to end the war—the House on June 3, the Senate on June 23—the first war-powers resolution ever to pass both chambers. But the votes were non-binding, and Trump resumed the bombing without the authorization they demanded. Asked what the war had taught him about the limits of his power, he answered, “There are no limits.”
The war on Iran is only one front in a global eruption of imperialist violence. Trump oversaw the attacks from the NATO summit in Ankara, which was given over to expanding wars, above all, against Russia.
At the summit’s arms forum on July 7, NATO advertised more than $50 billion in weapons deals, though the Associated Press reported that no prices were disclosed and that several of the contracts predated the summit. Buyers lined up for Saab’s GlobalEye surveillance planes, Northrop Grumman drones and Airbus tankers, and Britain led a dozen European states and Canada, without the United States, in a $50 billion program to build missiles that can reach Moscow. NATO said financial institutions had “already mobilised $217 billion” for the buildup.
NATO’s leaders cheered the widening war on Russia. They praised Ukraine’s drone strikes deep inside the country, among them the attack on Russia’s largest oil refinery, at Omsk, 2,500 kilometers from Ukraine, which the Financial Times reported this week had cut Russian refining by a fifth to two-fifths. The US bombing of the Iranian rail line belonged to the same offensive. In a single week Washington struck the infrastructure binding together Iran, Russia and China.
At the same time, Israel is continuing its onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon. An Israeli drone murdered at least four people in Lebanon on July 6, among them a school principal and her mother. In Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday Israeli forces would not leave Gaza, Lebanon or Syria.