For the sixth consecutive night, US forces struck targets inside Iran, and the region’s geography of retaliation stretched further than it has at any point in the three-week conflict. US Central Command confirmed Thursday morning that strikes targeted Iranian command centers, air defense installations, and coastal surveillance infrastructure. A bridge linking Bandar Abbas to Shiraz was hit; Iranian officials said at least eight people were killed and nine wounded in strikes in that area. The Times of Israel’s live coverage tracks the overnight developments.
Iran’s response extended across four countries simultaneously. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it launched ballistic missiles and drones at Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan, claiming the destruction of “several US refueling aircraft and fighter jets.” Jordan confirmed it intercepted three Iranian missiles over its territory and said no injuries resulted; neither the United States nor Jordan’s military confirmed the IRGC’s specific damage claims. Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan all reported incoming Iranian fire in the hours before dawn Thursday. CNN’s live updates cover the regional scope.
Qatar’s position in this conflict deserves attention. It has served as the primary intermediary, hosting both the US military’s Al Udeid Air Base and Qatari government officials who have been shuttling between Washington and Tehran. On Thursday, Qatar was also a target. Its defense ministry confirmed it intercepted incoming fire and reported one child wounded by shrapnel from the intercepts. No announcement has come from Qatari officials on the status of the mediation. Iran chose to strike its own go-between, which is a different kind of signal than anything this conflict has produced so far. Al Jazeera, which is based in Doha, reported on the Qatar attacks.
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped roughly 52 percent in the week ending July 12 compared to the prior week, according to vessel-tracking reports. Brent crude is trading near $85 a barrel, up about nine percent since the US reimposed its naval blockade on July 14. The IRGC’s stated position is that no oil or gas from the region will be exported as long as US strikes continue. The Strait handles roughly 20 percent of global oil trade; a sustained interruption wouldn’t touch only Iranian exports but would constrain shipments from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq as well. Iran’s official casualty total since the strikes resumed stands at 38 killed and more than 400 injured.
There’s no clean historical parallel for what’s unfolded over the past six nights. The Tanker War of 1987 and 1988 produced American escort operations in the Gulf, direct exchanges with the IRGC at sea, mining incidents, and culminated in Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988, the largest American naval surface engagement since World War II. Praying Mantis destroyed roughly half of Iran’s operational navy in a day. It stayed at sea: US forces struck Iranian warships and oil platforms on the water, not installations on Iranian territory. Six consecutive nights of airstrikes against the Iranian mainland, working progressively north and west toward Tehran, is a different category of action. Whether Iran’s response over the next several days follows any pattern the historical record describes is genuinely unclear, because this particular sequence hasn’t happened before. CBS News has been tracking the progression of the strikes.
An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is generating numbers that would command far more attention in a quieter week. The World Health Organization warned Thursday that the outbreak is spreading faster than any previous Ebola outbreak on record. France 24 reported on the WHO assessment. Confirmed cases stand at 2,011 and the death toll at 754. WHO also warned that the actual case count may be double the official figure, given limited testing infrastructure in affected areas. The outbreak has crossed into Uganda, which has confirmed 20 cases and 2 deaths as of July 14. WHO declared this a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in May. The current strain is the Bundibugyo virus, historically less lethal than the Zaire strain but capable of sustained human-to-human transmission.
The outbreak is centered in Ituri province, in the DRC’s northeastern corner near the Ugandan border, where 1,808 of the confirmed cases and 631 of the deaths have occurred across 26 of the region’s 36 health zones. The DRC has fought Ebola before: the 2018-2020 outbreak in this same northeastern region ran for 22 months and killed more than 2,200 people, making it both the deadliest and the longest Ebola outbreak on record until now. The response infrastructure built during that crisis is being tested again. When WHO describes a disease’s rate of spread as faster than any previous outbreak in the pathogen’s fifty-year history in the DRC, that’s a characterization health officials don’t reach for carelessly. Al Jazeera has tracked the outbreak’s progression.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on Tuesday, a removal confirmed publicly on Wednesday that produced demonstrations in multiple Ukrainian cities. Radio Free Europe reported on the protests. Fedorov, 35, had served as defense minister for six months. Before that he was Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, the role in which he built Ukraine’s drone warfare program into one of the most closely watched asymmetric military developments of the current conflict. The immediate cause, according to NPR and the Kyiv Independent, was a rift between the Defense Ministry and the traditional military command structure over drone strategy and conscription policy. NPR reported on the circumstances.
Zelenskyy is expected to nominate Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, a former police general, as the replacement. The protests that followed Fedorov’s dismissal are a notable development in a wartime government. Fedorov had built real credibility, particularly among younger Ukrainians who had come to see the drone program as Ukraine’s most distinctive strategic advantage over a conventionally superior force. Defense ministers don’t typically generate street demonstrations when they’re reshuffled. How the drone program operates under new leadership will be worth watching. Defense News covered the expected replacement.
A second heat dome is building across the United States, with tens of millions under heat advisories from the Southwest through the Plains. The Hill reported on the developing system. The first heat event, centered over the Northeast around the Fourth of July, killed at least 44 people nationally, including 29 in New Jersey, most found in homes without air conditioning. The Extreme Heat Emergency Act, which would amend the Stafford Act to explicitly cover extreme heat as a triggering disaster category, hasn’t advanced to a floor vote in either chamber since its introduction last October. Wednesday’s column covered the statutory gap in more detail. A second heat system doesn’t change the legal structure. It does add to the count.
Spain and Argentina meet Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, for the World Cup final, at 3 p.m. Eastern. It’s the first World Cup final ever played between these two countries. Spain’s Lamine Yamal, who turned 18 on Monday, worked separately from the main training group Thursday with what the team described as a precautionary issue involving his left thigh; multiple outlets reported he’s expected to start. Yahoo Sports covered the training update. No fitness concerns have been reported for Argentina’s Lionel Messi, who is 39 and has scored five goals in this tournament.
If Argentina wins, it would be the first country to claim back-to-back World Cups since Brazil in 1958 and 1962. If Spain wins, it’s their second title, sixteen years after their first. The match sets up a pairing that doesn’t come along often: Messi, at 39, still competing at the highest level, against a Spanish side built around a player who wasn’t yet born when Messi played his first World Cup in 2006. Yamal was born July 13, 2007, roughly thirteen months after Messi’s debut in Germany. Inside World Football has the final preview.
For anyone hosting this Sunday, Jean Hadley in the Living section has a practical idea: Summer Salad Recipes That Are Actually Dinner.
More than twenty countries have had search and rescue teams on the ground in Venezuela since the June 24 earthquakes, and they’re still there. The confirmed death toll, above 4,400 as of Wednesday, continues to rise as crews work through areas of total structural collapse. The US Geological Survey estimates the final count could fall anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000, a wide range that reflects the difficulty of accounting for population in places where the infrastructure that would support that accounting also collapsed. Venezuela has had complicated relationships with many of the countries whose teams are currently working there. Those relationships didn’t interrupt the response. The international search-and-rescue network showed up, set up, and kept working. That’s what it was built to do. On a week like this one, that counts for something.
Howard Fenn writes The Day, Monday through Friday.
