There’s been a lot of debate over what the end of the war with Iran should look like, and many believe that the only true victory would include regime change. The mullahs could lose their nuclear facilities and their top commanders, but as long as they held power, the threat would remain. Now, a leaked document from inside the regime itself suggests the Islamic Republic may be closer to collapse than anyone realized.
Iran has accused the US of hitting civilian infrastructure in the latest wave of air strikes since peace talks collapsed.
State media and provincial authorities said bridges, a train station and an airport were hit. BBC Verify has confirmed an attack on a bridge in Hormozgan province.
US Central Command (Centcom) has not given a list of targets, but said the attacks were intended to “further degrade Iranian military capabilities”.
🚨 JUST IN: Iran is REELING after President Trump ordered CENTCOM to begin targeting infrastructure targets, causing power outages and destruction of bridges
"The war planners [are] bombing ROADS AND BRIDGES around Bandar Abbas!" 🔥
The IRGC is getting CUT OFF from key supply… pic.twitter.com/KWlY12wdso
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 17, 2026
A Tehran billboard displayed an image of a dead President Donald Trump as Iran ramps up its death threats against the American president, after the collapse of the deal and ceasefire between the two countries.
Iran’s prisons are abattoirs and the Mullah regime killed tens of thousands of it’s own people in the lead up to the war.
The US said it had begun a new wave of strikes against Iran on Wednesday after reimposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports, while Iran threatened to shut off more regional energy exports.
The strikes mark the latest escalation of attacks and counterattacks launched by the two sides as they vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz, which carried about a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war.”
President Donald Trump is back at war with Iran after the fragile ceasefire crumbled last week, but the commander in chief might have more leverage to prosecute the conflict this time.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced that U.S. forces would once again blockade the Strait of Hormuz in an effort to choke off Iran‘s energy industry and thereby its economy. This decision followed the Treasury Department’s recent reimplementation of sanctions on Tehran, not to mention wave after wave of escalating strikes against hundreds of Iranian military targets in the strait, along the Iranian coast, and even on Iran’s oil launch point of Kharg Island.
Trump declares no tolls on Hormuz shipments
The US will take control of the Strait of Hormuz from Iran and be reimbursed for doing so, Donald Trump has said.
The president claimed the US would become the “guardian angel” of the waterway, a major maritime chokepoint for global energy trade that has effectively been closed by the conflict in the Middle East.
“We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it,” Mr Trump told Fox News on Monday. “We’ll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we’ll call it the guardian angel of the strait. And we should be reimbursed for that.”
An Iranian newspaper has published a “revenge list” of world leaders to be targeted for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran.
The rogues’ gallery in the conservative newspaper Hamshahri, which is published by authorities in Tehran and is known for its provocative tone, begins with images of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu with sniper-style targets on their foreheads.
The West has long nurtured the conviction that a regime dies with its ruler. On February 28, American and Israeli aircraft, in a joint operation prepared over months, killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei together with the chief of staff of the armed forces, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the defense minister and Khamenei’s closest adviser, thereby erasing the command structure of the Islamic Republic in a single morning. US President Donald Trump promised to “annihilate their navy” and level Iran’s missile industry.
Across the West, and among Iranians whose January uprising had been drowned in blood only weeks earlier, an immense hope took hold. The theocracy, at last, seemed gone.
The US said it launched a fresh wave of strikes on Iran after Tehran struck a ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it closed the waterway until further notice, and the “offending” vessel was attacked after it turned off its systems and diverted from the approved route, according to state media.
US Central Command (Centcom) says it carried out the “third round of strikes this week” after the IRGC forces “blatantly attacked” a Cyprus-flagged vessel.
Exclusive satellite imagery obtained and analyzed by CNN shows signs Iran may be attempting to rebuild its nuclear facilities. The activity raises questions as to whether Iran violated the memorandum of understanding signed in late June.
Shortly after this video was published,… pic.twitter.com/fYPjnprVAe
— CNN (@CNN) July 11, 2026
For decades, Israel has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States against the Iranian regime, a hostile power that threatens regional stability, global security, and the very existence of democratic values in the world. Whether facing direct threats or terrorist groups and proxy militias, Israel has demonstrated unwavering and steadfast resolve, and a willingness to act when others in the world hesitated.
President Trump on Friday night doubled down on his threat to “decimate and destroy” Iran should the regime succeed in assassinating him.
“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Europe is studying proposals that may allow the charging of navigational fees in the strait of Hormuz so long as the tolls are not compulsory and have the support of the UN agency that regulates maritime transport.
Britain’s deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said the imposition of compulsory tolls would be disastrous. But some of his cabinet colleagues said they recognised that systems of payments for specific navigational services were permissible in many natural waterways, including the strait of Malacca and the Channel.
Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to exact revenge on the United States and Israel for the killing of his father and predecessor as Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei was killed in an airstrike on February 28, at the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.
“Revenge is the demand of the nation and must certainly be carried out,” according to a written statement attributed to Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, which was broadcast on state television.
What can you say about a country that was decimated? That it loved martyrdom?
Iran has certainly been defeated on the battlefield, but by not yet losing the war, it has gained stature in geopolitical influence with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and some sympathy in the typically anti-West Global South — for standing up to the combined kinetic fury unleased by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, and continuing the fight, unbowed. The Iranian center of raw power currently lies with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), more than the mullahs who provide doctrinal support.
Israel shared new intelligence with the U.S. that it said indicated a fresh Iranian plan to kill President Trump, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that would mark an escalation in the war between Washington and Iran.
Iran for years has vowed openly to retaliate against Trump for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who was a top general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in the president’s first term.
