The U.S. strike on the island in the Persian Gulf left its oil infrastructure intact, but President Donald Trump warned that if Iran or anyone else interferes with the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, he will reconsider his decision not to wipe it out.

Although they account for only a small share of Iran's territory, the islands carry outsized importance because of their oil facilities and strategic location.

Here's what to know about Iran's islands in the Persian Gulf up to the Strait of Hormuz:

Kharg Island

The small coral island about 21 miles (33 kilometers) off Iran's coast is the primary terminal through which nearly all of Iran's oil exports pass. Iran has exported 13.7 million barrels since the war started, and multiple tankers were seen on satellite imagery Wednesday loading at Kharg, according to TankerTrackers.com, maritime intelligence company.

Seven people were killed and dozens injured after British-made weapons hit Bryansk, according to local officials.

A Ukrainian strike on the Russian city of Bryansk using UK-made long-range Storm Shadow missiles would have been impossible without the direct involvement of British military specialists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

The regional governor, Aleksandr Bogomaz, initially said the attack on Tuesday killed six people and injured 42, slamming the bombardment as an "inhumane terrorist act." On Wednesday, he reported that the death toll had risen to seven, while confirming that the strike had involved Storm Shadow missiles.

Peskov said on Wednesday the missiles "couldn't have been launched without British specialists." He added that the strikes again show the necessity of the continued military campaign against Ukraine, as its success will ensure that "these barbaric actions by the Kiev regime don't continue."

"One of the goals is to demilitarize Kiev and strip it of the ability to carry out attacks like this," Peskov stressed.

Outdated intelligence likely led to a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran, according to a U.S. official and three sources familiar with the preliminary findings.

The investigation found that an American munition was probably responsible for the strike, NBC News reported Friday, citing an American official and a person familiar with the preliminary findings, though the military is yet to formally conclude the United States is responsible.

More than 170 people, mostly children, were killed in the Feb. 28 strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab on the first day of the U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran, part of a barrage of attacks that also killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The ongoing investigation has so far found that the munition did not go off target, but rather hit the school because old intelligence showed it to be a military target, the four sources said.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has burned through "years" of critical munitions since the start of its aggression on Iran, a report says, noting that the country will needs years to replenish its stockpiles.

The Financial Times reported that the rapid depletion of weaponry includes advanced long-range Tomahawk missiles.

It is a "massive expenditure of Tomahawks", it cited one person familiar with the US military's use of munitions as saying, noting that "The navy will be feeling this expenditure for several years."

The Center for International and Strategic Studies estimated the US used 168 Tomahawks in the first 100 hours of the war of terrorism that began on February 28, with the assassination of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

"It's a lot. And it will take years to replace," said one US lawmaker of the Tomahawks, as well as US reserves of THAAD interceptors and Patriot missiles, critical air defenses against the barrage of missiles and drones that Iran has unleashed on US bases and interests.

Iran's grand plan to end U.S. presence in the Middle East

Iran and Donald Trump have each explained why failure to fight the current war to the end would simply lead to a new set of mutual attacks. Trump announced on March 6 that "There will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender," and announced that he must have a voice in naming or at least approving Iran's new leader, as he has just done in Venezuela. "If the U.S. military must utterly defeat it and bring about a regime change, or else "you go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who's no better.'"¹ It will take at least that long for America to replace the weaponry that has been depleted, rebuild its radar and related installations and mount a new war.

Iranian officials likewise recognize that U.S. attacks will keep being repeated until the United States is driven out of the Middle East. Having agreed to a ceasefire last June instead of pressing its advantage when Israeli and regional U.S. anti-missile defenses were depleted, Iran realized that war will be resumed as soon as the United States is able to re-arm its allies and military bases to renew what both sides recognize is to be a fight to some kind of final solution.

The Trump White House released a chaotic video montage of US military strikes on Iran combined with iconic movie scenes Thursday night, drawing backlash from both sides of the aisle for making light of the Middle East war.

The X video — which stitched together memorable moments from Hollywood blockbusters like "Gladiator" and "Top Gun: Maverick" with footage of strikes on Iranian targets — was posted by the White House with the message, "JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY," and later boosted by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth himself made a brief appearance in the 42-second montage, which was crammed with clips from "Transformers," "Braveheart," "Breaking Bad," "Better Call Saul," "Iron Man," and "Star Wars" as well as the popular video games Halo and Mortal Kombat — with a voice proclaiming a "flawless victory" at its end.

"White House trying to get every copy right [sic] strike known to man," one X user quipped.

Actor Ben Stiller later called on Trump aides to "please remove the Tropic Thunder clip."

"We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie," Stiller posted on X.

Seven people were killed, and more than 42, including children, were seriously wounded when British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles hit a residential area in the city in Russia's western region. Up to seven missiles were launched in what had to be a calculated act of murder.

Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz called it an "inhumane act of terrorism".

The Russian embassy in Britain stated: "The blood of Bryansk residents, including children, is on the hands of the British military, rendering London complicit in the war crimes and terrorist acts perpetrated by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the atrocity could not have been carried out without British involvement in the attack. He commented: "It is obvious that the launch of these missiles was impossible without British specialists. We are aware of this, we know this well, and we, of course, take it into account."

The strikes took place on Tuesday at 6 pm local time, when the city's streets and apartments were busy with civilians returning to their homes from work. Dmitry Belik, a lawmaker of the Russian parliament's lower house and a member of the Committee on International Affairs, said the attack was "planned in advance to maximize damage and civilian deaths." He condemned it as a "war crime."

The Storm Shadow missiles, which are loaded with 450-kg explosive warheads, are believed to have been launched from Su-24M warplanes that took off from Odessa.

Such a major coordinated operation undoubtedly was ordered by the leadership in the Kiev regime in conjunction with British and NATO advisers.

Ukraine's President, Vladimir Zelensky, expressed satisfaction with the operation, claiming that it was carried out to hit a military target in Bryansk.

This week also saw a surge in Ukrainian drone attacks in the Bryansk region, with hundreds of aircraft shot down by Russian air defenses, according to the Ministry of Defense.

Russia's Foreign Ministry noted that the attacks were a desperate attempt by Ukraine and its NATO sponsors to grab back international media attention as the U.S. and Israeli conflict with Iran escalates.

A Republican senator apologized this week for what US military investigators have reportedly determined was an American missile strike on a girls' school in southern Iran that killed around 175 people — mostly children — amid continued sidestepping by President Donald Trump, who has blamed Tehran for the massacre.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) — who supports the US-Israeli war on Iran — first apologized for the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab during a Monday interview with NBC News senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur.

"It was terrible," Kennedy said. "We made a mistake... I'm just so sorry it happened."

Kennedy repeated his apology Tuesday on CNN, telling political correspondent Kasie Hunt: "The investigation may prove me wrong. I hope so. The kids are still dead, but I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake. I wish it hadn't happened. I'm sorry it happened."

The bloc's economic situation was dire even before the shocks of the Iran war, and yet it doubles down on supporting the US and Israel.
Some observers of the current EU 'elites', including this author, used to believe that their defining feature - apart from things such as complicity in genocide and wars of aggression with Israel and the US, bigoted xenophobia about Russia and China, and, of course, pervasive corruption - was an absolute inability to learn.

We must admit, we stand corrected: Those running the EU are able to learn. The real problem is their relentless compulsion to learn the wrong thing. We are not dealing with non-learners but anti-learners: where others progress from experience, they regress.

Case in point, their response to the fact that their US-Israeli masters have started a war to end if not strictly all then at least all (barely) affordable energy supplies to the EU's economies, while its major players are already limping along on a spectrum between walking-wounded (for instance, France, maybe) to comatose (Germany, definitely).

In Germany, still the largest single economy inside the EU, providing almost a fourth of the bloc's total GDP, industrial demand - orders from factories - fell by over 11% in January. Such a decrease - really, collapse - in orders is "drastic," as German Manager Magazine notes. According to the Financial Times, this "very weak" start into the new year, puts preceding - and very modest - signs of a recovery from years of stagnation in doubt. Indeed. And all of that disappointing data was gathered before the fallout of the Iran war had even started.

Regarding the latter, it will be severe. Even Berlin's Ministry of Economics admits that the risks stemming from the war's consequences, most of them still incoming, is substantial.

In general, the Eurozone - different from but covering most of the EU - is not in good shape either. According to Bloomberg, a very low and yet still over-optimistic Eurostat estimate of expansion by 0.3% for the last quarter of 2025 has just been revised downward to 0.2%. But frankly, who cares at that level of misery?

Already 38 years ago, U.S. military planners understood that the American hegemony in West Asia would slip away. On 28 February 2026, the dam broke.

Iran does not have to win the current Middle Eastern war to defeat the United States and Israel. She only needs to survive and it looks like she is more than surviving. This shouldn't surprise anyone paying even casual attention to the events.

According to The Washington Post, US intelligence produced a classified assessment of the situation shortly before the US and Israel launched their military operations against Iran. They concluded that even a massive military assault on Iran is unlikely to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and its state system. For some reason however, their assessment was ignored.

It gets worse: only two days before launching the war against Iran, Trump fired the Director of the Joint Staff Vice Admiral Fred Kacher. Apparently, Vice Admiral Kacher tried to warn Trump against attacking Iran on the account of risks, insufficient munitions stockpiles and likely casualties. As U.S. military's senior operations officer supporting the Joint Chiefs, Kacher was the best placed officer to give the President a much needed reality check.

Trump apparently didn't like what he was hearing so he sacked Kacher after less than three months on the job. Kacher's boss, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine apparently also expressed caution about Iran but did ultimately accept to carry out his orders.