U.S. Infrastructure Strikes Have Left Iranians in the South Without LivelihoodsU.S. airstrikes last month in southern Iran targeted civilian infrastructure, including fishing ports, bridges, telecommunications networks, power plants, hospitals, and transportation corridors.
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AHVAZ, Iran—When U.S. missiles struck the harbor outside in the port city of Badar Abbas last month, Sajjad saw his livelihood literally go up in smoke. The small wooden fishing boat that had supported the 56-year-old and his family for years was reduced to a charred husk, along with dozens of other boats lining the docks. Sajjad told Drop Site News that nearly every fisherman he knows lost a vessel that night. Replacing a single boat now costs around 2 billion tomans (around $1,050)—far beyond what most families can afford. “Both my children are in university,” Sajjad said. “Everything depended on that boat. Soon, I may not even be able to pay their tuition.” When U.S. strikes resumed in early July following a two-month pause, the attacks focused heavily on southern Iran. Interviews with residents in hard-hit southern provinces like Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Sistan, and Baluchestan describe strikes not only on military facilities, but also on critical civilian infrastructure, including fishing ports, bridges, telecommunications networks, power plants, hospitals, and transportation corridors. Dozens of communications towers have been knocked offline in repeated attacks, disrupting internet and telephone services. One attack on a transmission tower near Tappeh Aluakbar in Bandar Abbas killed five people, including a woman who died shielding her son with her body, local residents told Drop Site. Transportation infrastructure has sustained similar damage. Alireza, a resident of Hormozgan who studies screenwriting and is carefully tracking recent events in the hopes of making a documentary about the war, described strikes on Tappeh Aluakbar overlooking Bandar Abbas, bridges linking Bandar Abbas to Khamir and Rudan, railway infrastructure, and key transportation routes connecting the province. At one destroyed crossing, road crews carved a temporary dirt route through a dry riverbed within hours simply to keep vehicles moving. The damage extends to the sea as well: Alireza estimates that roughly 300 civilian fishing boats have been destroyed across Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh, Sirik, and Jask, affecting the livelihoods of thousands of people. Two maritime search-and-rescue vessels operating near Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, and Hormuz Island were also put out of service. Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil export terminal, has long featured in discussions among U.S. officials and defense analysts as a strategically significant site and was bombed in March during the U.S.-Israeli aerial campaign. According to an Iranian military analyst who spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity for security reasons, if the U.S. ever sent ground troops to take over the island, Iran’s ability to reinforce Kharg would depend heavily on the transportation networks running through Hormozgan. “They’re not simply destroying roads,” the analyst said. “They’re reducing Iran’s ability to move personnel, equipment, and supplies before any future operation ever begins.” Residents and medical workers in Khuzestan also describe the toll on civilians caused by the bombing campaign, particularly children. Just after midnight on July 15, explosions shook the area surrounding Shahid Baghaei Hospital in Ahvaz, one of southwestern Iran’s principal treatment centers for children with cancer and blood disorders. While the hospital was not destroyed in the attack, the blast forced the emergency evacuation of 211 pediatric patients, including children undergoing chemotherapy and several dependent on ventilators. Hassan, a doctor who works at one of the hospitals where patients were transferred to, said the attack revived memories of the war’s opening day in February, when a missile strike on Minab Elementary School killed more than 150 people, most of them children. “The memory of Minab came back to us immediately,” he said. “When we heard the explosion, everyone feared the hospital had been hit.” The children were physically unharmed, but emotionally distraught. “We tried to reassure them,” Hassan told Drop Site. “We kept telling them nothing had happened. But children understand more than adults sometimes think. They knew the strike happened next to the hospital, and they were terrified.” Many had already lived through the 12-day war the previous year. That trauma, doctors say, will not disappear when this fighting ends. “This isn’t something that simply goes away after the war,” Hassan said. “These children will carry it with them.” Razieh, whose apartment overlooks the neighborhood of the hospital, ran outside after hearing the blast and saw smoke rising into the night sky. Since that night, she said, her three-year-old daughter can barely sleep. “She wakes up even on nights when there isn’t any bombing,” Razieh said. “She tells me, ‘Mom, we’re being attacked. I hear bombs.’ At some point I couldn’t keep pretending nothing had happened.” Hadis, another mother in the same neighborhood, described a similar pattern. Too scared to sleep, her children remain awake until the early hours of the morning. Loud sounds trigger panic. Some refuse to sleep unless a parent lies beside them. Across parts of Hormozgan, repeated strikes on electricity and communications infrastructure have interrupted power, internet, and phone service during the hottest weeks of the year when daytime temperatures frequently approach 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). The prolonged outages also cause water pumps to stop operating and refrigeration to fail. “The pattern documented across these accounts touches on core protections under international humanitarian law,” said Mohamed Habibi, a human rights lawyer who holds a master’s degree in international law from Imam Sadiq University. “The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocol I require that attacks distinguish between military and civilian objects, and that any incidental harm to civilians remain proportionate to the concrete military advantage sought. Article 54 of Protocol I explicitly prohibits attacks on objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, including water and power infrastructure—a threshold that Hormozgan residents say has already been crossed amid summer temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius.” A second military analyst, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the repeated strikes on electricity, communications, and transportation infrastructure appear designed to exacerbate the civilian cost of the conflict. “In this climate, electricity is part of basic survival,” he told Drop Site. “If you remove power, communications, and water at the same time, you’re putting enormous pressure on civilian society. The calculation seems to be that if enough pressure is placed on everyday life, people eventually become exhausted and begin questioning whether continued resistance is worth the cost.” Even at military sites, the targets appeared designed to maximize casualties rather than just weaken military capabilities. Shortly after 12:30 a.m. on July 15, residents near the Iranian Army garrison in Bampur, in the Sistan and Baluchestan Province, were awakened by two powerful explosions. Jalalzehi, who lives near the base, rushed outside to find smoke rising above the compound and the surrounding area dark. By morning, the Army confirmed at least seven soldiers had been killed, including a conscript with fewer than forty days left in his mandatory service. Iranian media reported that thirteen missiles struck the garrison, hitting a dormitory, a guesthouse, and guard posts. “Military installations such as the Bampur garrison remain lawful targets,” Habibi said. “However, the decision to repeatedly strike sleeping quarters rather than command posts or weapons depots raises a separate question long debated among legal scholars: whether maximizing casualties, rather than degrading military capability, played a role in the targeting.” The second military analyst also raised similar questions. “If the objective is simply to reduce a garrison’s operational capability, barracks are not the most decisive target,” he said. “A strike on command facilities, communications, or weapons depots would have a more direct military effect. Concentrating repeated strikes on dormitories suggests that maximizing casualties may also have been part of the calculation.” Eight days later, on July 23, missiles struck the Shalamcheh border crossing connecting Khuzestan Province with Iraq, as thousands of pilgrims prepared to travel to Karbala for Arbaeen, one of the largest annual religious gatherings in the Shiite calendar. Local residents reported two people killed and eleven wounded, with additional strikes hitting nearby towns. Hassan, an Iranian pilgrim present during the attack, has crossed the border to make the religious pilgrimage every year for the past decade. Normally, he said, the route is filled with mokabs—volunteer stations providing food, water and medical assistance free of charge to pilgrims making the journey. “When the missiles hit, people screamed,” he recalled. “But no one ran.” Instead, men moved toward the perimeter while women and other pilgrims formed lines to carry the wounded until ambulances arrived. “It showed something about our society,” Hassan said. “People were frightened, but they chose to help each other before thinking about themselves.” * All residents asked to be referred to by their first names only for security reasons. This article is published in collaboration with Egab.
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