The war the United States and Iran were supposed to have ended reignited for a second night, and this time it spread across the Gulf.
US forces struck Iran again on Thursday, a day after President Trump declared the June ceasefire "over." The US military said it had hit 90 targets across Iran, including ports and infrastructure along the Strait of Hormuz, according to Al Jazeera. Iran said at least 14 people had been killed over the two nights of strikes.
Some of the dead were civilians. Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency, citing the deputy governor of Hormozgan province, said a US strike on a commercial fishing pier in the coastal town of Sirik killed three fishermen and wounded 15. A provincial official in neighboring Bushehr told the state agency IRNA that projectiles had hit the perimeter of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, a military base, and another fishing pier, with no immediate word on casualties there.
Then Iran hit back beyond its own coast. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had fired 10 ballistic missiles at the US command-and-control center for the region and at the Al-Azraq air base in Jordan, claiming through Fars News Agency that both were "destroyed." "If the aggression of the US terrorist army is repeated, other US bases in the region will not be spared," it warned. Iranian state media said Tehran had also sent drones against US military sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.
The retaliation pulled in countries that are not party to the fight. Jordan's armed forces said their air defenses intercepted and downed eight missiles over the kingdom, scattering shrapnel but causing no injuries. Bahrain sounded sirens and reported interceptions, and Kuwait said one person was hurt.
The brokers scramble
The two governments that arranged the original truce are trying to save it. Pakistani sources told Anadolu that Pakistan and Qatar, which brokered the 17 June Islamabad Memorandum, had made fresh contacts with Washington and Tehran to halt the strikes and "return to negotiations as per agreement." Islamabad said it still believed the memorandum would hold and that neither side wanted a full war, while conceding that "further skirmishes" were likely.
The mediators also named the snag. Iran, they said, is "adamant" that it will fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz only after a ceasefire in southern Lebanon and the withdrawal of Israeli forces there, tying its conduct in the strait to Israel's war on its northern neighbor. US and Iranian negotiators had been due to meet in Islamabad for technical talks within a week or two before the shooting resumed.
Ankara's week
The timing framed Türkiye's summit. The strikes came as the NATO leaders who had just met in Ankara issued a declaration insisting that Iran "must never have a nuclear weapon" and demanding freedom of navigation through Hormuz, the same waterway now ringed by burning piers and intercepted missiles. Trump had used the summit to call the deal finished and to scold allies who would not back Washington against Tehran.
For now the fighting is measured in nights. Iran counts its dead, the Gulf states count interceptions, and the brokers count on a memorandum that one of its signatories has already called over. Whether it survives the week may turn on a ceasefire line in southern Lebanon as much as on anything in the strait.
Update, 9 July 2026: The fighting ran into a third day with no sign of closing, and Israel signaled it was not done. Prime Minister Netanyahu told an air force ceremony that "the war has not ended," and the army chief, Eyal Zamir, said "major operations" still lay ahead. Türkiye, which hosted the summit where the truce came apart, worked its own channel: Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, about the ceasefire. The cost showed in the water. Just 23 tankers and cargo ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, down from 47 a week earlier and far below the 138-a-day average before the war, according to the firm Kpler cited by the BBC, and the US-recommended route through Omani waters had all but emptied.