New Delhi, July 18 -- JASK, Iran - Twenty villages and roughly 10,000 people in southern Iran were cut off from drinking water Saturday after American airstrikes destroyed the core infrastructure of the Bunji desalination plant overnight. The pumping station and power transformer were "completely destroyed," according to Hamzeh Pour, chief executive of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company. It was an attack that appeared to supply the specific pretext Iran's government had been preparing to announce.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, announced Saturday that Tehran was suspending all its commitments under the Islamabad memorandum of understanding. "The US has violated and suspended all its commitments within the fram...