If ever there was a symbol of how far away America and Iran are from their short-lived ceasefire, this billboard is it.
Portraits of Donald Trump, his wife and his children, behind US flag-draped coffins have been put up in Tehran’s Palestine Square.
The US President is at the top, wife Melania and daughter Ivanka below and then at the bottom are his other children Barron, Donald Jr, Tiffany and Eric with the White House in the background.
It came as US missiles struck Iran’s bridges, railways and water facilities for the seventh night in a row.
Both sides traded blows in the biggest escalation of fighting since the US resumed its bombing campaign six days ago.
Mr Trump followed through on his threat to target civilian infrastructure that is also used by the Iranian military.
Washington hopes the attacks will cripple the regime’s civilian infrastructure, forcing Tehran to ease its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
In fresh comments, Mr Trump claimed the US is ‘winning big in Iran’ and that ‘you will see the fruits of that labour very, very shortly’.
Tehran unveiled a billboard depicting US President Donald Trump and members of his family above coffins draped in the American flag on Thursday
Pictured: A damaged bridge following US strikes across Iran for the seventh consecutive day
The billboard includes a Persian sentence meaning ‘blood for blood’ and is hanging in Palestine Square in the Iranian capital
It has been reported that a number of bridges were destroyed in the airstrikes. At least seven people were killed.
US missile attacks hit the city of Bandar Khamir, on the coast of the Strait of Hormuz.
And the US military’s Central Command (Centcom) said it hit dozens of targets in its latest bombardments.
The strikes also appeared to have collapsed a tower at Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, a key trade route for landlocked, neighboring Afghanistan.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth shared the image of the surveillance tower appearing to collapse.
That image had circulated on social media via activists prior to Hegseth sharing it.
Chabahar port, which Iran had been running with support from India, has been a repeated target of American airstrikes.
Iranian state media acknowledged a third round of strikes on the facility without immediately acknowledging the tower’s collapse.
The country has warned that it will return to ‘full-scale war’ if US strikes against it continue for another two or three days.
This is the moment Iran’s naval surveillance tower in Chabahar was destroyed
People stand near a damaged portion of a bridge in the aftermath of a strike, in Bandar Khamir, Iran
Major General Mohsen Rezaei, a senior military advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, said according to state media: ‘Iran will no longer limit itself to retaliatory, like-for-like responses…and no political border will be safe.’
Earlier, Iran told its citizens to turn off their air conditioning during peak hours as the country’s power grid came under strain due to the US strikes.
Tehran’s energy ministry said that the power restrictions were necessary ‘to help ensure a stable electricity supply in the southern provinces, which are currently facing extreme heat and attacks on electricity supply facilities.’
Temperatures in the capital were expected to hit triple digits Friday, with highs of 102F on Saturday and Sunday.
Meanwhile, in Kuwait, where Tehran said it had targeted US military sites, the electricity ministry said an Iranian attack damaged a power and water plant and urged users to ration electricity.
The Kuwaiti military said several troops had been wounded when Iranian drones targeted a number of its bases and camps.
Iran’s Guards said they had targeted US radar systems and military aircraft in Qatar to ‘punish the aggressor’, with Doha saying it had intercepted a missile attack.
An Iranian missile is launched from an undisclosed location towards US targets in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain
Smoke and flames rise are seen in Chabahar, Iran, after local media reported explosions
Abu Baker, a Sudanese resident of Qatar, said he had been about to go to sleep when he heard the air alerts, hoping the interception would be out at sea.
‘Then it hit and it shook my house,’ he added. ‘I am worried that this war will drag on…but thank God we’re in a country that protects us.’
Iran’s Guards said they had attacked two US radar sites in Oman and the Al-Tanf military base in Syria.
A Syrian military source denied there had been an attack and US forces said they had withdrawn from the base earlier this year.
In Bahrain, Tehran targeted US helicopters and planes at an airbase, Iranian state media reported, with the island nation urging citizens to take shelter.
In Iraq’s Kurdistan region, drone and rocket strikes killed nine members of an Iranian Kurdish armed opposition group on Friday, the exiled Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan said, blaming the attack on Iran.
Iran’s health ministry said at least 38 people have been killed and more than 400 wounded in the country since fighting resumed.
Mediators have attempted to bring both sides back to the negotiating table and China and Pakistan called for the United States and Iran to stop fighting and resume talks
The Strait of Hormuz remains the heart of the conflict, a narrow waterway responsible for one-fifth of global oil.
Iran has tried to assert control over the waterway and opened fire on ships after Trump reimposed his blockade.
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