OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
11:26 AM – Friday, July 17, 2026
The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the elimination of an Iranian surveillance tower after its sixth straight night of major strikes against Iranian infrastructure.
On Thursday night, the command posted a statement on X outlining the nature of the attack, which degraded Iran’s military capabilities in retaliation for the regime’s attacks against commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
“U.S. forces, including fighter jets, aerial drones, and warships, launched precision munitions that hit dozens of Iranian military targets such as coastal surveillance and air defense sites, military logistics infrastructure, and maritime capabilities,” CENTCOM stated.
The attacks sought to block Iran’s port of Bandar Abbas, one of Iran’s most important bases for influencing the strait, by targeting road and rail bridges.
The command affirmed that the more than 50,000 U.S. service members operating in the Middle East “remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.”
On Friday, CENTCOM added that U.S. forces destroyed the Chah Bahar Shahid Kalantari Port surveillance tower during the previous night’s wave of strikes, describing the tower as “part of a maritime surveillance network along Iran’s Gulf of Oman coastline used for decades by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to track and target commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
“The destruction of the tower directly degrades IRGC’s ability to coordinate attacks on innocent civilian crew members,” said the command in an X post. “Furthermore, the strike protects freedom of navigation in regional waters for all vessels, except for ships attempting to violate the ongoing U.S. naval blockade against Iran.”
CENTCOM included video footage of the attack, showing a large, dark cloud of smoke after the strike found its target.
The announcements came shortly after President Donald Trump addressed the nation, proclaiming that the U.S. was “winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly.”
They also followed reports on Thursday that Iran had retaliated against previous U.S. strikes by attacking its Gulf neighbors, including Bahrain.
“The General Command emphasizes that the deliberate use of missiles and drones to target civilians and private property constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” the Bahrain Defense Force (BDF) stated at the time.
As of Thursday, U.S. forces have additionally redirected three commercial vessels to comply with the U.S. blockade.
Last week, Trump declared that he believed the months-long ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was “over” after the Islamic regime attacked three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
For President Trump, a non-negotiable condition of ending hostilities with Iran was that they open the essential waterway to allow the Gulf countries to export oil across the globe. It had been effectively closed since the U.S. and Israel first began to attack Tehran. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil is exported from the Gulf region via the Strait of Hormuz.
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