US says Kharg Island strikes hit military targets, not shift in strategy

Donald Trump said on Tuesday “we will find out tonight” what happens in Iran, calling it “one of the most important moments” in world history.

“We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world,” he said in a post on Truth Social.

He also warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” while raising the prospect of “complete and total regime change.”

Trump said “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen,” adding that decades of “extortion, corruption, and death will finally end.”

One attacker was killed and two others were neutralized in a shooting near the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, the city’s governor said on Tuesday.

Governor Davut Gul said two police officers were injured in the incident.

Turkey’s interior minister said the attackers had been identified, adding that one suspect had ties to an organization that exploits religion.

That matters not only because of the damage done, but because of what these places meant. In Iran, repression has never depended on one institution alone. It has been built as a layered system, running from the top decision-making bodies in Tehran down to the neighborhood police station, the local Basij outpost and the courthouse where detainees are processed.

A review by Iran International of citizen reports and source material found that, in about one month after the war began, at least 130 sites tied to internal repression were destroyed or hit.

They included 57 Basij buildings or bases, 43 police (FARAJA) facilities, 10 Revolutionary Guards compounds, and 11 security complexes involved in repression. Other targets included judicial buildings and the state broadcaster, institutions that helped complete the chain through prosecutions, propaganda and coerced confessions.

Iran International sources also put the toll among security forces at nearly 5,000 dead and about 21,000 wounded.

From the command center to the street

The internal security system has long worked in three layers.

At the top sits the command structure: the Supreme Leader, the Supreme National Security Council, provincial security councils and, in Tehran, the IRGC’s Tharallah headquarters, which can take control of multiple security organs during major unrest. Around the capital, a similar role has been played by the Seyyed al-Shohada corps.

Below that are the operational forces: The Police Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran (abbreviated as FARAJA); special anti-riot units; provincial Revolutionary Guards formations; and IRGC’s specialized units such as Saberin and Fatehin.

Alongside them is the Basij, the paramilitary network embedded in neighborhoods across the country. Its Imam Ali battalions, often arriving on motorcycles, became one of the most recognizable instruments of street repression after the 2009 protests.

The third layer is institutional support: intelligence bodies, courts, prisons and state media.

The strikes appear to have touched every layer.

Senior figures reported killed include Ali Khamenei, the longtime ultimate authority over crackdowns; the intelligence minister and several of his deputies; senior Guards and Basij commanders; commanders tied to Tehran’s suppression apparatus; police intelligence officials; and members of the judiciary, including officials linked to Evin prison and Tehran’s prosecutorial system.

The symbols that fell

The targets were not only militarily useful. Many were symbols.

In Tehran, the Ministry of Intelligence and compounds linked to the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence arm were hit again after earlier strikes in the June 12-day war. Tharallah-linked facilities in northern Tehran, security clusters in eastern Tehran, anti-riot police facilities and Basij sites across the capital were also struck.

Some locations had an importance that went beyond their walls. Tehran’s Revolutionary Court building on Moallem Street was one of them. For decades, it stood as a symbol of summary trials, political prosecutions and death sentences. Its destruction carried a message larger than the physical damage.

The same was true of the state broadcaster. For many Iranians, it was not just a media institution but a place associated with forced confessions and public humiliation of dissidents. Seeing it hit again mattered for that reason.

Even when buildings had been partly emptied, they still housed the tools of coercion: files, servers, records, communications systems, vehicles and equipment.

In some post-strike videos, papers and official documents could be seen scattered in the streets after blasts ripped through buildings that looked outwardly residential or commercial.

One attack in western Tehran offered a different picture: a strike on the 12,000-seat Azadi sports hall, where anti-riot personnel appear to have been moved. Iran International’s reporting estimates that between 900 and 1,200 security personnel may have been killed there.

From the capital to small towns

What happened in Tehran was echoed outside it.

On the capital’s outskirts, command centers in Rey, Karaj and Mahdasht were hit, along with Basij and police-linked sites in surrounding towns.

In the provinces, Iran International identified heavy strikes on intelligence, police, judicial and Guards facilities in cities including Isfahan, Khorramabad, Ilam, Sanandaj, Semnan, Shiraz, Urmia and Tabriz.

In small towns, local police posts carry a special weight. They are often the clearest symbol of the central government’s presence, and one of the first places where people encounter coercion directly.

That is what makes a place like Abdanan important. The town had already become known for the violence used against residents during the January uprising. Even a mourning ceremony for local victims was met with gunfire.

Days later, residents watched their police station and Guards facilities explode. For people who had just buried their dead, the collapse of those buildings was not just another wartime image. It was the visible breaking of a local order that had seemed untouchable.

What remains after the strikes stop

If the campaign ends soon, the central question will not be only what has been destroyed, but what has been exposed.

The Islamic Republic’s internal coercive machine appears weaker, less insulated and less imposing than before.

Walls around intelligence compounds have fallen. Buildings long associated with fear have been reduced to rubble. Officials who once threatened subordinates from the top of the pyramid are gone.

But the country that remains will also be poorer and angrier.

Official figures show point-to-point food inflation in the last month of the Persian year running above 113%, with some staples such as cooking oil up as much as 220% and bread up 140%, while wages rose only 20% to 30%.

Power cuts, already worsening before the war because of years of underinvestment, point to deeper structural decay that long predates the current fighting.

The war will end. What will remain for ordinary Iranians is a country already battered by record food inflation, stagnant wages and years of neglected infrastructure long before the current fighting began.

For many of those who lost relatives in the January crackdown, that larger story may be distilled into one image: not an oil turbine or a military depot, but the police station, Basij base or courthouse that once embodied fear, now lying in ruins.

Strikes hit bridges and rail-linked infrastructure across Iran on Tuesday after Israel warned civilians to avoid trains and Donald Trump threatened to destroy bridges and power plants if a deal is not reached.

In central Iran, a railway bridge near Kashan was hit, along with another bridge near Qom, while a key road bridge on the Tabriz-Zanjan highway in northwest Iran was also struck.

The attacks followed Israel’s warning to stay away from trains and railway lines, citing risks to civilians.

In and around Tehran, strikes hit multiple districts including Yusefabad, areas near Mehrabad Airport and Tehranpars, while nearby Karaj and surrounding towns were also affected.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned on Tuesday their response to the United States could extend beyond the region and target energy infrastructure, saying previous restraint had ended.

“From now on, all these considerations have been lifted,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement.

It said it would act against US and partner infrastructure in a way that would deprive them of the region’s oil and gas resources for years.

Regional partners of the United States should know Iran had exercised restraint due to good neighborly relations, it said, but that those considerations no longer applied.

The Guards added that if US forces crossed what it called red lines, “our response will go beyond the region.”