Iran war enters dangerous new phase as US strikes civilian facilities, say analysts

The US-Israeli war with Iran is entering a more dangerous phase as Washington intensifies attacks on civilian infrastructure, a shift analysts say is likely to provoke broader Iranian retaliation and push the conflict toward "uncontrollable escalation."

In a social media on Thursday, US President Donald Trump claimed responsibility for a strike that partially destroyed Iran's largest bridge, posting footage of the structure collapsing in a plume of black smoke and warning that "much more" would follow if no deal is reached. Eight people were killed and 95 wounded in the strike, according to Iranian state media.

The attack came a day after Trump threatened to hit Iran "extremely hard" over the next two to three weeks and "bring them back to the Stone Ages," rattling global markets and sending oil prices higher.

Such targeting of civilian facilities marks a clear broadening of the campaign, which began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and has since involved more than 15,000 bombing raids on the Islamic Republic.

At least 1,900 people have been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran since the start of the war, according to a rough estimate by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, while more than 115,000 civilian facilities have been damaged.

Wang Jin, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Northwest University, said the shift to civilian targets is the result of a growing US-Israeli assessment that purely military pressure cannot eliminate Iran's ability to hit back. Trump's Wednesday speech, he added, provided explicit political cover for further escalation by indicating that the war would continue.

Trump, who faces mounting domestic pressure from soaring gasoline prices and falling approval ratings, has claimed progress in talks with Tehran. Iranian officials, however, have struck a defiant tone, denying the negotiations were moving in a positive direction.

The talks, mediated by Pakistan, have stalled over Iranian demands for guarantees against further attacks and sanctions relief, and US insistence that the Strait of Hormuz be reopened first.

Washington's intensification of strikes is intended to put the screws on Iran, but "with the US currently at a strategic disadvantage, Iran is unlikely to compromise or make concessions," Tang Zhichao, director of the Center for Middle East Development and Governance Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told CGTN.

Instead, Iran will almost certainly respond with more counter-strikes, leading to "an expanding and intensifying pattern of violence that will make the region more volatile and mediation far more difficult," Wang told CGTN.

With US and Israeli strikes widening beyond military sites, Iran has signaled it will target US tech companies operating in the Middle East, accusing them of supporting the broader war effort. It has also identified eight major bridges across the Gulf as potential retaliation targets.

On Thursday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had struck a data center belonging to Oracle in Dubai and destroyed an Amazon cloud computing center in Bahrain.

These counter-strikes are aimed at poisoning the Middle East investment climate, trigger capital flight and sever economic ties that benefit the US and its allies, Du Wenlong, a military expert and special commentator for China Media Group, told CGTN.

Trump's vow to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Age" is raising questions about the international legal implications of the US military campaign.

In an open letter released on Thursday, more than 100 international law experts in the United States, including scholars from Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of California, voiced concern that the pattern of strikes on schools, health facilities and homes, combined with statements by senior US officials, could amount to violations of international humanitarian law.

The letter cites, among other examples, an attack on a girls' school in Minab that killed 175 people at the outbreak of the war, Trump's comment that the United States might carry out strikes on Iran "just for fun," and remarks by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the US does not fight with "stupid rules of engagement."