Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Hits Bridges and a Port in Country’s South, Iranian Media says

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the latest round of attacks had “hit dozens of Iranian military targets” but made no mention of civilian infrastructure.

By Leily Nikounazar, Shirin Hakim and Lara Jakes

Here’s the latest.

Bridges, rail lines, power and water facilities, and other targets in Iran, Kuwait and elsewhere in the Middle East were attacked in airstrikes on Friday as the United States and Iran escalated their weeklong crisis over the Strait of Hormuz.

The dueling attacks were the latest in nearly a week of daily bombardments since a cease-fire agreement between the United States and Iran fell apart, derailing aspirations for a broader peace deal.

Straining to resolve a war that has dragged on for more than four months, damaging the global economy, President Trump has threatened to attack civilian infrastructure to try to force Iran’s leaders to make a deal. Such attacks could be considered a war crime, and Iranian officials have warned they will retaliate more broadly if the United States targets civilian infrastructure.

The U.S. military struck bridges and a port facility in Iran, according to Iranian state media, which said the targets included rail and road connections between the southern coast and the rest of the country. Strikes also hit a railway station near the Bandar Abbas naval base, Iran’s state broadcaster said.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement early Friday that the latest round of American attacks had “hit dozens of Iranian military targets such as coastal surveillance and air defense sites, military logistics infrastructure and maritime capabilities.” The statement made no mention of civilian infrastructure.

Eight people were killed and 20 others wounded in the U.S. attacks across Iran, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Friday.

The Iranian military said it had retaliated by firing on Middle Eastern countries that hosted U.S. military facilities, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Syria and Qatar. Kuwait’s government said a power plant and a water desalination facility were hit, igniting fires and damaging several generators. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Attack drones were also shot down early Friday in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region, according to a statement from the regional counterterrorism force. It did not identify the source of the drones, though Iraqi Kurdistan hosts U.S. forces and has repeatedly come under fire from Iran and Tehran-aligned Iraqi militias since the war began.

A tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Oman, was struck by a projectile on Friday, according to United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a monitoring agency run by the British Navy. The ship reported minor damage and no crew members were harmed, the agency said.

The strait is a major conduit for the global oil and gas trade, and Iran has repeatedly fired on commercial ships as it battles the United States over control of the key waterway. The U.S. military this week resumed enforcement of a blockade of Iranian ports as part of its pressure campaign on Tehran.

The Iranian Energy Ministry issued a statement on Friday, carried by the state broadcaster, asking residents of southern provinces to shut off air-conditioning for an hour during peak periods of use. Temperatures in Bandar Abbas, the capital of Hormozgan Province, were forecast to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming days.

Here’s what else to know:

• Bandar Abbas attacks: Marzieh, a teacher in the southern Iranian city said in an interview that airstrikes there in recent days had largely targeted the airport and air force facilities, and where the docks and naval forces were. “The ground was shaking,” Marzieh said, asking to be identified by her first name out of fear of government reprisal. “It is truly terrifying.”

• Oil prices: Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose 1.5 percent on Friday, to between $85 and $86 a barrel. The renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran have caused shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to largely halt.

Yeganeh Torbati, Erika Solomon and Jenny Gross contributed reporting.

July 17, 2026, 9:32 a.m. ET47 minutes ago

Lynsey Chutel

Kuwait’s army said on Friday that Iranian drone strikes on military facilities overnight had injured several personnel. The army’s chief of staff and other senior officials visited wounded members of the Kuwaiti Land Forces in hospital, according to images shared by the military on social media.

July 17, 2026, 8:28 a.m. ET2 hours ago

Lara Jakes

Lara Jakes has covered Mideast conflict and diplomacy for more than 15 years.

How 4 veteran negotiators would approach diplomacy with Iran.

With the cease-fire shattered and Iran and the United States battling for control of the Strait of Hormuz, prospects for a détente look dim.

But Tehran’s release of an Iranian American citizen this week, coupled with a hint from Iran’s chief negotiator, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, that his country could be open to talks, suggested that the door to diplomacy may still be ajar.

Another influential figure in Tehran, the lawmaker Mohammad Reza Bahonar, said Friday, “Dialogue and negotiation is also a continuation of the war and part of it.”

Talks have thus far failed to dent the decades of tensions between the United States and Iran. Four veteran Western diplomats who have collectively spent years negotiating either directly or indirectly with Tehran warned that de-escalation at this moment would be difficult to achieve. One advised against going back to the table any time soon. Here is their advice.

Agree on the goal

The Trump administration has cited several aims for the war: regime change in Tehran; ending the country’s nuclear program and curbing its military; and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where commercial ships could sail freely before the conflict began.

Catherine Ashton, a British politician and the top European Union diplomat from 2009 to 2014, said, “What is needed is clarity on the endgame both seek — what do the U.S. want as a final outcome they can live with, and what does Iran want?”

“For diplomacy to restart, they need to establish what they are trying to do and agree on a plan,” added Ms. Ashton, who took part in years of talks focused on preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

Federica Mogherini, who succeeded Ms. Ashton as the chief E.U. diplomat and helped clinch a nuclear deal with Tehran in 2015, said that expecting to agree on all of Mr. Trump’s demands at once was “clearly a non-starter.”

To restart negotiations, Ms. Mogherini said, U.S. officials must “be clear on their ultimate goal — possibly a realistic one.”

Lower the temperature

During a fraught round of negotiations in 2015, Ms. Mogherini recalled, there was a shouting match between Iranian and international officials.

Iranian diplomats typically stay calm under pressure, Ms. Mogherini said, but after a European country raised an unrelated issue at a make-or-break moment during those talks, the Iranian side lost its composure. Ms. Mogherini ordered an hourslong cooling-off break. When negotiations resumed, the focus was shifted squarely back on the nuclear issue, she said.

Ms. Mogherini suggested that the Trump administration should “take a more rational, consistent approach, less impulsive reactions and random contradictory public statements.”

Talks would benefit, she added, from including other interested countries or multilateral organizations. “You need more players around the table to dilute a little bit the confrontational attitude that both sides would have,” she noted.

Consider the timing

Some American conservatives believe it is better for the United States to wait before taking another stab at diplomacy.

Elliott Abrams, who worked on Middle East diplomacy under three Republican presidents, including Mr. Trump, said the only negotiation that the United States should currently consider is “a bare-bones Hormuz deal” to lift the American naval blockade if Iran agreed to allow free shipping through the waterway.

“We just tried negotiating, and the Iranians emerged from that feeling triumphant, and believing that they would now be able to take over the Strait of Hormuz and monetize it,” Mr. Abrams said. “So I don’t think a quick return to the negotiating table is helpful.”

That limited approach, playing more of a waiting game, echoed comments this week from Condoleezza Rice, who was President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and secretary of state. She told an audience in Colorado that her approach to the Iranians would be to “just let them sit there and stew in their lousy economy, where most of their A-level nuclear scientists have been killed, where I believe there are deep splits in the Iranian government.”

Set a realistic deadline

The cease-fire agreement that Iran and the United States agreed to last month set a 60-day deadline for brokering a final peace deal, including the thorny issues of limits on Iran’s nuclear program and control of the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly halfway through that timeline, the two sides appear farther apart than ever.

Ms. Ashton said deadlines were appropriate “if you include what you expect to cover in that time, and both sides agree.”

Robert Malley, who was on American negotiation teams under the Democratic administrations of President Barack Obama and President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said that diplomatic talks with Tehran were usually drawn out because Iranian officials “sweat every detail, revisit tentative understandings, and verify far more than they trust.”

If new negotiations begin, he said, “there will likely be no grand bargain, only painstaking talks over every last clause and every last word.”

“The Trump administration prizes speed and simplicity,” Mr. Malley said. “By dint of its actions, it guaranteed that whatever it gets will, at best, be very slow and extremely tough.”

July 17, 2026, 7:16 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Lynsey Chutel and Leily Nikounazar

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Friday that it had struck a United States air base in Qatar, though neither the U.S. military nor the Qatari government have commented on the claim. In a statement, the Guards said the attack on the Al Udeid Air Base was in retaliation for U.S. targeting of civilian territory. The base is home to the Combined Air Operations Center, which coordinates U.S. air defense and strategy in the region.

July 17, 2026, 6:27 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Leily Nikounazar

Marzieh, a teacher in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, said in an interview that the airstrikes on the city in recent days had largely been where the airport and air force facilities are located, and in the west, where the docks and naval forces are. “The ground was shaking,” Marzieh said, asking to be identified by her first name only for fear of government reprisal. “It is truly terrifying.” Power cuts now happen every day, she added, while roads had been damaged in the recent strikes, leaving some people unable to travel, and fishing boats had been destroyed amid strikes on military vessels. “Our lives depend on the sea,” she added. “How are people supposed to survive now?”

July 17, 2026, 6:26 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Jenny Gross

Renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran continued to disrupt the supply of energy, causing shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to slow to nearly a halt. Just eight ships navigated the artery on Thursday, the second full day of the reinstated U.S. naval blockade of Iran, according to Kpler, a maritime data company. Before the war started in late February, more than 130 ships would pass through the waterway each day. As U.S. strikes on Iran continued for a seventh straight day, Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose 1.5 percent on Friday to between $85 and $86 a barrel.

July 17, 2026, 6:04 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Lynsey Chutel and Hwaida Saad

A power plant and water desalination facility in Kuwait were hit by an Iranian strike, igniting fires and damaging several generators, according to the Kuwaiti government. The country’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said firefighters had brought the blaze under control, and reported no injuries. The authorities have urged citizens to reduce their electricity use while technicians work to restore the damaged units.

July 17, 2026, 5:58 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Jenny Gross

Reporting from London

Shipping in the Persian Gulf nears a halt and oil prices rise.

Note: Data may not include all activity because some vessels have turned off tracking capabilities during the war.

Source: Kpler.

Renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran have caused shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to slow to nearly a halt, with just eight ships navigating the artery on Thursday, the second full day of the reinstated U.S. naval blockade of Iran.

Oil prices rose as the Iran war, now in its fifth month, continued to disrupt the supply of energy.

Shipping activity was at its lowest level in more than a month, down from 13 ships the day before, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm. Most of the vessels that navigated through the strait on Wednesday and Thursday passed through the Tehran-mandated corridor in Iranian waters.

The United States carried out more attacks against Iran on Thursday as the fighting continued for the sixth straight day.

The U.S. blockade on Iran is likely to severely hamper Tehran’s ability to monetize its control over the strait, as it did during the first blockade, which lasted from April until mid-June. During that period, U.S. forces redirected or disabled more than 149 ships, depriving Iran of billions of dollars in oil revenue.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that as of Thursday, American forces had redirected three commercial vessels trying to evade the blockade, disabled a ship that did not comply and boarded another ship. The military said the boarding happened on a Cook Islands-flagged tanker, the Wen Yao.

Price of Brent crude oil

On Friday, Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose 2.1 percent to $86 a barrel because of the renewed fighting in the Persian Gulf. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was up 2.4 percent to over $80 a barrel.

Fuel prices have also continued to go up, with the average price of gasoline in the United States on Friday moving 4 cents higher to $3.98 a gallon and diesel up 5 cents to $5.06 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club.