MANY MINDEDAs US-Iran strikes reach an eighth day, power and water plants burn
For an eighth straight day, the US and Iran traded strikes. US Central Command said a service member was killed and another wounded on Saturday in northern Iraq while detonating unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone; a day earlier, an attack on a base in Jordan killed two US soldiers and left one missing. The reported US death toll reached 17. Iran's health ministry said US strikes over three weeks had killed at least 50 people and injured more than 500.
The fighting is hitting the systems that keep a region lit and watered. Officials in Kuwait said an electricity-and-water plant struck on Saturday was hit again, starting a fire, and the Gulf Cooperation Council accused Iran of targeting civilian infrastructure. Iranian media reported strikes on an under-construction nuclear plant at Darkhoveyn and on Qeshm Island, though the UN nuclear watchdog said that site was at a very early stage and held no nuclear material at its last visit. The US reimposed a blockade of Iranian ports; Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed.
Each of those hits runs abundance backward. Power and water plants are the shared plumbing beneath everything else, and when they burn, energy and clean water grow scarcer and costlier for civilians far from the front. A closed Hormuz threatens the tankers that carry much of the world's oil. This is the commons being degraded, not built.
A preliminary deal reached in June to end the war, which began on February 28, collapsed within weeks, and President Trump declared it over on July 8; whether talks resume is the thing to watch. The limits are real: casualty and strike claims come from the respective militaries, governments, and state media, not independent confirmation, and Centcom said it was still verifying unidentified remains from the Jordan site.
Source: BBC World