CENTCOM, US Central Command, struck Iran again on Wednesday 8 July, hitting roughly 90 military targets: missile and drone stores, logistics depots, a railway bridge in the north-east and a base at Bushehr, with partial power loss reported across the southern ports of Bandar Abbas, Konarak and Chabahar1. That second wave dwarfs the 80-target strike CENTCOM ran days earlier, widening the campaign from military sites into the electricity that keeps three port cities running.
Iran answered on Thursday 9 July with a claimed joint IRGC Navy and Air Force operation against about 85 US-linked sites, naming Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem in Kuwait and Sheikh Isa and Juffair in Bahrain2. For the first time the IRGC extended its target list to Qatari soil, claiming a strike on a satellite antenna. Iran had last hit US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain on 28 June, a salvo Washington answered then with a bounded raid on ten targets. This round outsizes both, and neither government signed an order to accompany it.
No executive order, sanction or fresh military authorisation accompanied either the strikes or the retaliation. The exchange runs on sorties and claims, not signed instruments, which leaves the Islamabad memorandum with no document to breach and none to restore.
