The renewed war between the United States and Iran has sharply escalated, with US forces carrying out repeated overnight bombing runs and both governments trading threats to strike each other’s critical infrastructure. American military officials say the campaign has now stretched to nearly two weeks of consecutive nightly attacks, with the human and financial costs climbing steadily and no ceasefire in sight.
US Central Command said its strikes have hit “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities” across Iran, according to reporting by The Associated Press published by NPR. The same account noted that the fighting resumed after the collapse of an interim ceasefire, leaving no clear end to a conflict the US and Israel began more than four months earlier.
The war traces to February 28, when a surprise US-Israeli air assault, code-named Operation Epic Fury, killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with other senior officials. In the days that followed, Tehran retaliated by attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and vessel traffic through the waterway dropped about 70 percent as oil and gas prices surged, the Council on Foreign Relations reported.
A standoff over the world’s busiest oil chokepoint
The immediate trigger for the latest round is a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas once passed in peacetime. Iran has claimed authority to manage the strait and has demanded that vessels coordinate passage with Tehran, while Washington insists the channel must return to its status as a free international waterway. Iran effectively closed the strait to traffic after the war began on February 28, sending oil prices higher and handing Tehran leverage at the negotiating table.
A ceasefire briefly interrupted the fighting. A 60-day truce negotiated in mid-June reopened the strait to limited traffic, but the deal collapsed on July 8; days later Iran again shut the waterway while President Donald Trump revived the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and said he would impose a 20 percent toll on cargo moving through the channel. Critics, including defense analyst Max Boot, argued the June deal amounted to appeasement, and Boot wrote for CFR that “Iran has seen how it could hold the entire world hostage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz,” leaving Trump little room to maneuver short of further escalation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking at an ASEAN meeting in Manila, said Washington remained willing to negotiate but accused Tehran of not being “serious” about talks, warning that allowing a state to control an international waterway and charge tolls would set “a very dangerous precedent” for chokepoints elsewhere. Central Command, meanwhile, said its strikes were meant to degrade Iran’s ability to menace shipping, asserting that Iran had attacked more than 30 commercial vessels in the strait over the previous three months.
Trump threatens Iran’s bridges and power plants
Trump has escalated his rhetoric, warning that the US will destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure in response to attacks on shipping. In a social media post, Trump wrote that any time Iran fires on a ship in the strait, the US “will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT,” including targets in or near Tehran, a threat Al Jazeera described as more specific than his earlier warnings. Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency quoted a military source who said Tehran would retaliate by striking regional infrastructure and energy facilities linked to US interests.
US strikes have already hit highway and railway bridges in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province and collapsed a tower at the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, according to the NPR account, which reported that the bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, off from roads into the country’s interior, while CENTCOM said the Chabahar tower was part of a Revolutionary Guard network used to “track and target” commercial ships. Iran acknowledged attacks on its power infrastructure for the first time when its Energy Ministry urged residents of southern provinces to conserve electricity during extreme heat. By the 11th consecutive night, Iranian officials reported strikes as far afield as Tabriz in the northwest and Behbahan and Omidiyeh in Khuzestan, with air defenses activating over Tehran and Bushehr.
Iranian retaliatory fire has spilled across the Gulf, with Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Iraq all reporting intercepted missiles or drones in recent days. The damage has not been limited to interceptions. Kuwait said an Iranian strike hit a power and water desalination plant, a serious blow in a country that draws about 90 percent of its drinking water from desalination; falling debris from an intercepted barrage wounded a child in Qatar; and a strike in Iraq’s Kurdish region killed at least nine people at a camp linked to an Iranian Kurdish dissident group.
Casualties and a mounting bill
The toll on both sides has grown. As of mid-July, Iranian authorities said at least 46 people had been killed and more than 400 wounded in recent US strikes, including eight killed in a single bridge strike, while US officials reported 14 service members killed and 427 wounded since the war began, acknowledging 13 additional injuries among Army soldiers and Navy sailors in a matter of days. Days later, Al Jazeera reported that at least 18 US service members were dead and about 500 injured as the campaign entered its 11th consecutive night of strikes.
The financial cost has become a flashpoint in Washington. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the war has cost roughly $37.5bn so far and that the Pentagon would need an additional $67bn to sustain the fight, an estimate far above the $25bn figure the Defense Department gave lawmakers in April. Independent trackers put the running cost closer to $1bn a day, topping $100bn by mid-July, and the White House has asked Congress for $87.6bn in supplemental funding, more than three-quarters of it, about $67.1bn, for the Pentagon.
Lawmakers from both parties pressed Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine over the spending and the lack of a decisive outcome. Democratic Senator Gary Peters accused the administration of asking “the American people for a blank cheque,” while Republican Senator John Kennedy demanded “straight answers.” The requested funds form part of a proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027 that, if approved, would mark a 44 percent jump and the largest such budget in US history, on top of a record $1.05 trillion in 2026, up from $919.2bn in 2025.
Analysts warn the campaign is straining American arsenals. An analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that stockpiles of at least four key munitions, including Patriot and THAAD interceptors, Standard Missile-3s and Precision Strike Missiles, had fallen to half their prewar levels or lower. Paul Musgrave, a Georgetown University professor in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the Pentagon “is not making this up,” because used munitions and airframes must be replaced, even as he called it a conflict Americans did not ask for.
The bill lands on American households
The war is also reaching into household budgets. The disruption in the strait is the largest in the history of the oil market, roughly three times the size of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, according to the Rapidan Energy Group, and shippers have rerouted vessels around southern Africa, adding cost and time and triggering fuel shortages and blackouts in parts of Asia. Oil rose above $86 a barrel as crossings fell to a three-week low. By July 22, Americans had paid more than $72bn in added fuel costs since the war began, about $549 per household, by Brown University’s estimate, and volatile oil prices helped push inflation to a three-year high, with consumer prices up about 4.2 percent in May.
The pressure is spreading to other waterways. Yemen’s Houthis declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, prompting two Asia-bound tankers carrying Saudi crude to turn around in the Red Sea and effectively squeezing the Bab al-Mandeb strait as well as Hormuz. In an address to the public, Trump insisted the war was going well, telling Americans “we are likewise winning big in Iran,” even as pressure builds on him to end a prolonged Middle East conflict of the kind he had once campaigned against.
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