Iran buried Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Mashhad this morning — and the clock the burial started matters more than the ceremony. Negotiations for a permanent deal were slated to begin once the funeral ended. It has ended. And the last signal out of Washington before it did was not a talks announcement: the White House says Trump spent Thursday night on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu discussing US "moves" in the Persian Gulf.
American forces struck 90 targets across Iran on Thursday, per Centcom: airport runways, missile launchers, a railway bridge in Golestan province, and sites near the Bushehr nuclear complex. Washington framed the wave as protection for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials counter that the US struck near an operating nuclear power plant — a claim the Pentagon has not acknowledged, and one that flooded right-leaning outlets while barely registering on the left, per Ground News.
Iran answered across four borders. Kuwait shot down three ballistic missiles, a cruise missile and ten drones, with one person wounded; Bahrain and Jordan intercepted incoming fire; the Revolutionary Guard claimed strikes on a US base in Jordan. Iran's Health Ministry counts at least 14 killed and 78 wounded across two days of American strikes, most of them military.
