DUBAI: Iran acknowledged "attacks on power infrastructure" during the US airstrike campaign for the first time Friday, showing the escalation in the American campaign.
Iran's Energy Ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces. It said those areas "are currently experiencing extreme heat and attacks on power infrastructure".
The ministry did not elaborate on whether it was power plants, transmission lines or other equipment that had been attacked.
US President Donald Trump had threatened to go after bridges and power plants as America vies with Iran over control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Earlier on Friday, the US military’s Central Command said it hit dozens of targets in its latest airstrikes.
The strikes also collapsed a tower at Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, a key trade route for landlocked, neighboring Afghanistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared the image of the surveillance tower collapsing, part of his effort to assert American control over the strait. That image had circulated 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.
Iran described the tower as overseeing commercial traffic into the port. However, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard also operates at ports across the country.
As of 6 am. Friday, the U.S. strikes had killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400 in Iran, Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said.