C

💢 BREAKING: Coordinated strikes have hit all three of Iran’s largest steel plants simultaneously – Mobarakeh, Esfahan, and Khuzestan – the backbone of the country’s non-oil economy. Together they produce roughly 70% of Iran’s steel output. Iron and steel is Iran’s second-largest export category at $6.48 billion, its primary hard-currency lifeline outside of oil. Mobarakeh makes the flat steel used in cars and pipelines. Esfahan produces structural beams and railway rails. Khuzestan supplies the raw slabs that feed factories nationwide. Steel became Iran’s top non-oil export precisely as a sanction hedge as it is cheap to produce using local ore and natural gas, and a critical source of foreign currency when oil revenues were blocked. Hitting all three at once targets critical industrial capacity and the economic architecture Iran spent decades building to survive Western pressure.

Marco Rubio: "Unlike them, we're hitting military targets"