Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
Iran Conflict 2026
7AUG

140 US sorties, zero signed paper

3 min read
12:08UTC

CENTCOM flew its third strike wave in a week, hitting roughly 140 targets and taking the total past 300, then declared the Strait of Hormuz open even as Washington signed no new Iran instrument.

ConflictDeveloping
Key takeaway

Washington's Iran week ran to 140 sorties and zero signatures, its open-strait claim resting on statements.

CENTCOM (US Central Command), the US military command responsible for the Middle East, launched its third strike wave of the week within hours of Iran's closure declaration, hitting roughly 140 targets: missile batteries, air-defence sites, IRGC fast-attack boats and positions on Qeshm Island 1. The wave took the week's running total past 300, and CENTCOM called the strait open to all vessels seeking to lawfully transit the international waterway 2. Iranian Navy Lieutenant Hamidreza Dehghani was reported killed at Jask port, per Iranian state media 3.

Those figures and the open-strait line reached us through Al Jazeera and Iran International secondary readouts; CENTCOM's own release was unreachable 4. President Donald Trump, who days earlier had called the interim US-Iran agreement over , told Meet the Press the strait was open as far as he was concerned. Iran, firing missiles and posting a formal notice, calls the water shut; Washington, flying sorties and issuing a sentence, calls it open.

CENTCOM's third wave extends a cadence already run twice this week, 90 targets on 8 July and more than 80 on 7 July . The only signed US instrument on Iran across that whole sequence remains the Treasury's 7 July revocation of the oil waiver General License X, replaced by a wind-down-only General License X1 . A revocation withdraws relief; it does not create a new authority, so no War Powers Resolution clock attaches to this week's strikes and Congress gains no fresh signed record to grip.

Between 11 and 13 July Washington flew about 140 sorties and signed no new Iran instrument 5. The Federal Register carries no fresh Iran document, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Treasury's sanctions bureau, logged its last Iran action on 10 July, and The White House presidential-actions register stops at a 9 July aircraft-tariff proclamation 678. Allies and insurers reading for a durable US position on Hormuz have statements to plan against, not a signed framework.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

CENTCOM (US Central Command, the American military headquarters for the Middle East) launched its third major bombing run of the week, hitting about 140 targets just hours after Iran said it had shut the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway ships use to move Gulf oil to the rest of the world. The targets included missile launchers and small attack boats belonging to the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite branch of Iran's military). One Iranian naval officer, Lieutenant Hamidreza Dehghani, was reported killed in Jask, a town on Iran's south-east coast near the mouth of the strait. The US military says the strait remains open for ships that follow international law, directly contradicting Iran's closure claim. For now neither side can prove the other wrong, because commercial ships are staying away regardless of who is technically right.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Sustaining three strike waves in a single week depends on munitions already forward-positioned at Gulf and Indian Ocean bases such as Al Udeid and Diego Garcia; standoff missile stocks are not manufactured at wartime tempo, so a campaign at this pace draws down a finite pre-positioned inventory rather than an open production line.

Congress supplies a second, separate constraint only if it chooses to invoke one: because the campaign has proceeded without a formal war authorisation, there is no legislative mechanism forcing a pause, so the practical ceiling on strike tempo is munitions supply, not Congress.

First Reported In

Update #153 · Iran declares Hormuz closed; US says open

Gulf News· 13 Jul 2026
Read original
Different Perspectives
Turkiye
Turkiye
Erdogan followed the Pakistani delegation to Jeddah for an instrument that has not been signed. Ankara's entry widens Saudi Arabia's defence architecture beyond the existing Pakistan pact, adding a second non-Gulf military partner mid-conflict.
Oman
Oman
Muscat is the corridor's broker but has published nothing about the arrangement Fars describes on its behalf. The account leaves Oman administering outbound traffic only, a narrower role than the shared route its mediation has rested on since 1979.
Pakistan
Pakistan
Islamabad sent Sharif, Munir and Dar to Jeddah to widen a defence commitment it has honoured in cheaper registers since March, when Dar invoked the Saudi mutual defence pact. Jeddah tests whether that hedge becomes a binding trilateral instrument with Turkiye.
United States
United States
Washington rejected the Majlis Hormuz bill outright while CENTCOM's own tally kept climbing to 49 vessels redirected since 14 July. Both instruments tightened in the same week Trump promised the strait would reopen soon.
Iran
Iran
Iran's foreign ministry is selling a phased Hormuz corridor through Oman and denying any percentage cargo tariff, while its own Majlis is legislating fines to 20% and a bar on Israeli-linked cargo. The two accounts, from the same government, do not agree with each other.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
Riyadh published a target forecast, not an attribution, for the campaign it says the Najran strike previewed. That keeps an Article 51 case available while it formalises a trilateral defence architecture with Pakistan and Turkiye.