🇺🇸🇮🇷⚡️- "U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces completed an additional round of strikes against Iran, July 8, to further degrade Iran's ability to attack commercial shipping and innocent civilian mariners in the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. forces struck approximately 90 Iranian military targets including air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, and military logistics infrastructure along Iran’s coastline. The latest strikes follow successful execution of offensive strikes in Iran the night before.

CENTCOM forces hit approximately 80 Iranian military targets July 7, including more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats, to impose heavy costs for Iran violating the ceasefire by attacking three commercial vessels navigating the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. forces remain vigilant, lethal, and prepared to execute operations directed by the Commander in Chief." - US Central Command.

🇸🇦🇮🇱⚡- Amichai Stein of The Jerusalem Post recently reported, citing two sources, that Saudi Arabia is seeking to side-line Israel from the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) through a series of infrastructure projects collectively referred to as the "Peace Railways." The plan would reroute the corridor through Syria instead of Israel, bypassing the Israeli land bridge altogether.

The Peace Railways project, more commonly known as the Hejaz Railway, is an Ankara-backed geopolitical infrastructure initiative aimed at restoring Turkey's influence across the Middle East while expanding its reach through Syria. Building upon the original Ottoman-era Hejaz Railway, the proposed network would stretch from Istanbul to the Port of Salalah in Oman via Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Much of the required railway infrastructure already exists at the national level, with Syria representing the largest missing link. Once completed, the network would provide a continuous overland corridor linking the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

While Stein noted that the project would bypass Israel, he missed that it would also reduce the strategic role of another key IMEC participant, the United Arab Emirates, by shifting the principal ship-to-land gateways towards Oman and, more recently, Yemen. Following developments in eastern Yemen last year between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, discussions have once again resumed between the Yemeni government and the Saudi Kingdom over a proposed railway linking the Port of al-Mukallah, the capital of the Hadhramaut Governorate, with the wider regional network.

Both the western route towards the Red Sea and the southern route towards the Gulf converge in Damascus, making the Syrian capital the critical junction of the entire network. Control of Damascus would therefore place Syria at the center of overland trade between Europe and the Gulf—and, by extension, India—effectively giving the Syrian government the key to the IMEC and considerable leverage over one of the world's most important emerging trade corridors.

However, the principal route via Riyadh is currently inoperable due to the conflict in As Suwaida, through which it passes. Druze militias controlling parts of the governorate have taken an anti-Damascus position and have, ironically, been funded and armed by Israel and the United Arab Emirates, threatening the Ankara-Riyadh railway project's most strategically important corridor.

Note, on Rerum Novarum's map, red lines denote existing railway infrastructure, while blue lines indicate proposed railway routes.

— 🇮🇷/🇶🇦 UPDATE: Qatar was in fact a target of last night’s attacks, per new Iranian military statement

@Middle_East_Spectator

— 🇮🇷 NEW: Today, Iran shipped out 10 million barrels of oil in a single night, amid an assumption that war will restart imminently – Tanker Trackers

@Middle_East_Spectator

—❗️🇮🇷/🇮🇶 Iranian field commander, interviewed by media:

‘If the Kurdish groups, with backing of the U.S. and Israel, try to infringe on Iranian sovereignty, we will not only push them back—we will establish a security zone of several kilometers’

@Middle_East_Spectator