Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday released a statement strongly condemning the latest US airstrikes in Iran and said the attacks that allegedly hit two railway bridges were a “blatant war crime.”
According to Iranian media, one US strike hit an important railway bridge in Iran’s northeastern Golestan province that links Iran to Turkmenistan and China.
Iranian media also reported that a US attack disrupted passenger train traffic between Tehran and Mashhad, a city in eastern Iran that’s the hometown of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Huge crowds have gathered in Mashhad as Khamenei’s body has arrived in the city for his burial.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that it strongly condemned “the aggressive attacks carried out by the US terrorist military in the early hours of Thursday, July 9, against several locations in the southern coastal provinces, as well as two bridges in the eastern provinces along the railway route to the holy city of Mashhad.”
The ministry said that the attacks “unquestionably constitute a grave war crime.” So far, the US military has neither confirmed nor denied targeting the railway bridges in northeastern Iran. US Central Command claimed that its forces hit 90 targets, including “air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, and military logistics infrastructure along Iran’s coastline.”
Iranian officials have said that the two days of US airstrikes killed 14 Iranian military personnel and civilians and wounded 78 others.
The attacks came after President Trump threatened that he could bomb bridges, energy infrastructure, and desalination plants in Iran. “I would say in one day we could knock down every single bridge in Iran, there’s not a thing they can do about it. Their electric manufacturing facilities … they have desalinization plants, we’ll take them out if we have to. I’d hate to do that. That’s probably the one I’d like to do least,” he said on Wednesday.
