U.S. bombs civilian infrastructure in Iran; Israeli attacks in Gaza at highest level since “ceasefire”; Rubio urges crackdown on “far-left terrorists”

U.S. escalates strikes on Iran. Iran widens its retaliatory attacks. Iran’s UN ambassador condemns U.S. attacks on civilian infrastructure as “war crimes.” Oil market burning through its emergency stocks, threatening wider shock. U.S. Vice President JD Vance responds to Drop Site’s reporting on Iran, Kushner, and Witkoff. Israel continues violating Lebanon ceasefire with overnight attacks. Israel kills 14 in attacks on Gaza. Israel pushes its “Yellow Line” to Gaza’s main north-south artery. Israeli guards beat Palestinian physician and denied him medical care. Gaza flotilla participant files rape complaint against Israeli prison guards. Al Jazeera : Undercover investigation exposes alleged UK and Canadian funding of illegal Israeli settlements. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio launches major push against “far-left terrorists,” says new designations are coming soon. ICE agent who killed man in Maine accused of violent, troubled past. Rep. Ilhan Omar pushes U.S. to join the ICC. Court-appointed UAW monitor pressured Fain over Gaza. Trump Media to charge for quicker access to Truth Social posts. White House teleprompter operator probed for insider betting on speeches. Armed assailants seize chemical tanker off Yemen coast. Nigeria completes evacuation of 1,490 citizens from South Africa. Russian attacks on Ukraine kill 4. Sudan’s army says it destroyed over 200 RSF vehicles in two-week offensive. U.S. approves nearly $2 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia. China condemns UK nationalization of British Steel. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets senior Chinese official, pledges deeper ties. From Drop Site: Ansarallah Vows to Block Saudi Access to Bab al-Mandab After Strikes on Sana’a A World Turned Upside Down: Syria Reckons with an Assad-Era Peacemaker Major Blockchain Firm Consensys Accidentally Hired a North Korean Hacker Recording Shows UAW Federal Monitor Pressured Union President Over Israel This is Drop Site Daily, our free daily news recap. We send it Monday through Friday. Today’s edition is being sent to more than 750,000 subscribers. Help us grow that number by forwarding and recommending this newsletter. Subscribe 🛒 Get your “ Drop [Site] News/Not Bombs ” Hoodie here: Get Your Hoodie Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike at the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, on July 16, 2026. Photo by Eyad Baba / AFP via Getty Images. Iran and Ceasefire U.S. escalates strikes on Iran : The U.S. military escalated its assault on Iran late Thursday and early Friday, hitting targets across the country, including civilian infrastructure, for the sixth straight night. The U.S. struck at least six bridges, a railway junction, an airport, and a telecommunications tower in the country’s south, according to officials in the Hormozgan province. One of these attacks, on the Bandar-e-Khamir bridge, killed at least seven and wounded nine others, according to Fars News agency. Iran’s energy ministry confirmed damage to power lines in the area of Bandar Abbas and said that electricity had been restored in some areas and that the country’s grid had been stabilized. The U.S. also struck a maritime control tower in the southern city of Chabahar for a third time in a week, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency. The U.S. struck Qeshm Island on Thursday evening, Iranian media confirmed. Explosions were reported across other southern and southwestern sites, including Sirik and Bushehr, and farther west in the oil-rich Khuzestan province, Ahvaz, Behbahan, Hamidiyeh, Susangerd, and the Karoun area. Explosions were also heard in the Lorestan province, and civilian infrastructure was reportedly damaged in the northern province of Semnan. Additionally, CENTCOM claimed that U.S. Marines boarded the tanker M/T Wen Yao in the Gulf of Oman as part of Washington’s renewed naval blockade of Iran, which it claims had redirected three commercial vessels and disabled one that refused to comply. Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said on X that renewed U.S. airstrikes have killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400 so far in July. Iran widens its retaliatory attacks: Iran launched attacks on U.S. military installations in the Gulf, hitting targets in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. It also widened its range of targets, hitting locations in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Iran launched Arash attack drones at the Isa Air Base in Bahrain, its army reported, targeting U.S. helicopters and reconnaissance aircraft. Iran attacked a base in Kuwait, claiming to have targeted its defensive radar capacities, weapons depot, HIMARS launchers, and missile stockpile. Kuwait said Friday one of its power generation and water desalination plants was hit in what it called a “sinful Iranian attack,” sparking a fire and damaging the facility and several electricity generation units. Iranian missiles struck Qatar, with debris from one attack injuring a child, according to the country’s Interior Ministry. The country’s Defense Ministry reported multiple missile interceptions on Thursday and Friday, and condemned Iran for its “sinful aggression.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed to have destroyed a “long-range radar system” and several military targets in an attack on the U.S. Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard also claimed that it carried out a “surprise attack” on a U.S.-led coalition special operations center in Al-Tanf, southern Syria. The U.S. announced that it had left Al-Tanf in February, and it is not clear whether any U.S. personnel were at the facility at the time of the attack. The Iranian navy reported early on Friday that it had targeted a maritime-control radar installation on Oman’s As Salamah islands and air-control radar in Oman’s Ghanam region. Iraqi authorities said five drones struck the city of Erbil on Thursday, adding that two of these crashed and one was shot down. Satellite imagery published by an open-source intelligence account suggests that an Iranian Shahed drone hit a U.S. Patriot missile launcher in the city, though no official confirmation has been issued and Iran’s military had not claimed responsibility for the attack. Satellite imagery published on Thursday by the mapping firm Soar appeared to contradict earlier claims by the UAE that a fire at the Zayed Military City was on July 13 “accidental,” potentially adding to the list of confirmed Iranian strikes over the course of the last week. Iran’s ambassador condemns U.S. attacks on civilian infrastructure as “war crimes”: Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s UN ambassador, condemned U.S. attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure as “acts of aggression” and “war crimes” in a letter to the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council, accusing Washington of deliberately and illegally striking civilian targets. Oil market burning through its emergency stocks, threatening wider shock: Fatih Birol, the chief of the United States Energy Information Agency, warned Bloomberg about the danger of rising energy prices, telling the outlet the danger is “not months. It is weeks.” IEA chief Fatih Birol reported that the U.S.’s historic 400-million-barrel emergency release helped push barrel prices down by $20. Birol also told Bloomberg that higher petroleum production from the U.S., Brazil, and Kazakhstan had also limited the shock, as did draws from the U.S.’s reserves, and Saudi and Emirati efforts to bypass Hormuz. But, he warned, none of these reprieves were “endless.” The U.S. EIA has reported crude stocks at Oklahoma’s Cushing facility fell below 20 million barrels in June and may continue to be near “tank bottoms,” the minimum oil that must remain in tanks and pipelines for pumps to work. The analytics firm Kpler separately reported on Thursday that oil transit through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen by 62% to 4.1 million barrels a day, claiming that a full shutdown had been prevented by the use of alternate export routes and softer Chinese demand for petroleum, roughly corresponding to a similar report by Goldman Sachs analysts. The firm reported only eight crossings through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, seven of which used the northern Iranian corridor. Vance responds to Drop Site’s reporting: Vice President JD Vance denied a Thursday report from Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, in which a senior Iranian official said that Tehran sent Vance a private message warning that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were exploiting their access to U.S.-Iran negotiations for financial gain. “This is completely bogus. I never received a message like this,” Vance wrote, calling the allegation that they traded on insider information “absurd,” adding that “no one has done more” than Kushner and Witkoff “to work towards peace and prosperity” in the Middle East. Drop Site’s full report on Iran’s warning about Witkoff and Kushner is available here . Lebanon Israel continues violating Lebanon ceasefire with overnight attacks: Israeli forces raiding the town of Haris in the Tyre (Sour) district, trapped several civilians in an overnight attack, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency, prompting these civilians to appeal to the Lebanese Army for evacuation. Also in Tyre, an Israeli drone struck the Mansouri area and the Naqoura road, wounding a Syrian national. Israeli artillery also shelled the towns of Baraachit and Hadatha in the Bint Jbeil district, where Israeli forces carried out a large-scale demolition. Palestine Israel kills 14 Palestinians in attacks on Gaza: Israel killed 14 Palestinians and wounded at least 37 in separate attacks in Gaza on Friday, Al Jazeera reported. At least eight Palestinians were killed and 20 others wounded after an Israeli drone struck a group of Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to Gaza-based Safa News Agency. The strike targeted the gathering as the funeral procession of a Palestinian who had been killed earlier passed through the area. Israel struck an apartment building in Gaza City, killing one and wounding others. In northern Gaza, an Israeli drone strike in Beit Lahia killed a 52-year-old woman. One person was also killed and three others injured after an Israeli strike hit a makeshift shelter housing displaced people, west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Israel pushes its “Yellow Line” to Gaza’s main north-south artery: Israeli forces entered Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood under heavy gunfire, killing one Palestinian, wounding three others, destroying homes and shops, and forcing families to flee, according to reporting from Drop Site contributor Mohamed Ahmed. By morning, they had pushed the “yellow line,” the boundary marking the edge of Israeli military control, in violation of the October 2025 agreement, to Salah al-Din Road—the 45-kilometer artery connecting northern and southern Gaza and passing through every governorate. A witness described quadcopters and shelling surrounding displaced families overnight, forcing women to sleep in the street. “We don’t know where to flee to,” he said. Separately, on Thursday, senior military officials reportedly told Israel’s Security Cabinet that Israel now controls between 67% and 70% of the Gaza Strip, according to the Jerusalem Post. Israeli attacks in Gaza at highest level since October “ceasefire,” conflict monitor reports: Israeli attacks on Gaza reached their highest level since the October 2025 agreement, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) via Reuters. ACLED recorded more than 40 Israeli air and drone strikes in June—the highest monthly total since the truce. Israeli guards beat Palestinian physician and denied him medical care: Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya told his lawyers on July 14 that Israeli prison guards beat him again following a previous legal visit on July 2, adding that he remains in solitary confinement in an underground prison and has been denied medical care for an injury to his right eye, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel. “Do everything possible to get me out of this place,” Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya told his lawyers, noting the discontinuation of his pain medication and a refusal to give him the results of a recently conducted X-ray. During the visit, Abu Safiya was concealed from his lawyers behind an opaque partition and forced to communicate by telephone while masked prison guards remained close enough to hear the conversation. Abu Safiya, the former director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has been imprisoned without charge or trial since December 2024 after refusing to abandon his patients. Gaza flotilla participant files rape complaint against Israeli prison guards: Anna Liedtke, a 25-year-old activist aboard the Gaza-bound aid Freedom Flotilla, filed a criminal complaint in Israel accusing female guards at Givon Prison