Day 132 brief — 2026-07-09

Day 132 turned the maritime break into a two-way kinetic war. In response to the three IRGC-attributed strikes on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, US Central Command struck more than 80 targets across Iran — air defenses, command-and-control nodes, coastal radar, anti-ship missile sites, and over 60 IRGC small boats — the first US kinetic strikes on Iranian soil since the June ceasefire, with Sentinel-2 imagery confirming heavy damage to an IRGC Navy base in southern Iran (Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Liveuamap). Iran answered within hours: the IRGC said it struck 85 US military targets in Bahrain — including the Fifth Fleet base area at Port Salman — and Kuwait's Ali Salem Air Base, and claimed to down an MQ-9 drone, warning of a 'harsher' retaliation in the coming days (RFE/RL, PBS, NBC News). At the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump declared the memorandum of understanding 'over' and the talks a 'waste of time' — though he said he 'might' let them continue — and threatened a second day of strikes, reimposition of the naval blockade, and hits on Iran's electrical grid (Al Jazeera, CNBC, CNN). Energy repriced hard: Brent jumped about 5.2% to settle at $78.02, and US WTI rose 4.4% to $73.52 (CNBC). Against the exchange, Khamenei's six-day funeral reached its final rite — burial at Mashhad's Imam Reza shrine on July 9 — and neither side has formally declared the MoU dead, leaving the targeted post-burial Doha resumption technically alive but badly damaged (CNN, Al Jazeera). 30-day ceasefire probability falls to 25. Direction stays escalating, now on a two-way kinetic axis.