Iranian authorities have installed a large billboard at Tehran’s Enghelab Square showing US President Donald Trump lying in an open black coffin, accompanied by the phrase “We Will Kill Trump” in both Persian and English. The display, erected on 15 July, also carries the inscription “In memory of Minab’s children” — a reference to a strike on an elementary school in the southern city of Minab on 28 February that, according to Iranian state media, killed more than 150 people, including 120 girls. The mural appears as the United States military, via Central Command, confirms a fresh wave of precision strikes against Iranian command centres, air-defence sites, missile and drone capabilities, and coastal surveillance facilities, including in the port city of Bandar Abbas and on Greater Tunb Island.

Viewed from Tehran, the billboard forms part of an intensifying hardline propaganda campaign. During the week-long funeral ceremonies for former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — killed on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes in late February and buried on 9 July — mourners carried identical “Kill Trump” placards and chanted anti-American slogans. The new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has issued a rare public statement pledging to avenge “the pure blood” of the dead, a demand that Iranian state broadcasters describe as a national obligation. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims to have responded to alleged US attacks on a children’s cancer hospital in Ahvaz by launching ballistic missiles at the Azraq air base in Jordan and the Sheikh Isa air base in Bahrain. Iranian media also report damage to an industrial facility on Qeshm Island from what officials call an “enemy attack.”

From Washington, the mural is being read alongside intelligence reports of an active Iranian plot to assassinate the president. Western security officials, cited by US media, say Israel recently alerted Washington to fresh indications of such a plan. Trump himself, speaking at a NATO summit in Turkey, stated he was aware of being on Iranian target lists and vowed to “root out that cancer.” The US military frames its ongoing operations as necessary to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of global oil and gas flows. The strikes have effectively collapsed a ceasefire and memorandum of understanding signed earlier, with Washington reimposing a naval blockade and Tehran threatening to close the strait and other export routes.

Regional capitals are watching the fallout. In Baghdad, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s visit to the White House this week — days after he attended Khamenei’s funeral — is interpreted by US officials as a signal that Iraq’s new government intends to pivot away from Tehran. According to American and Iraqi sources, al-Zaidi resisted Iranian pressure to avoid making Washington his first foreign destination and sat beside Trump as the president detailed further strikes and the blockade. The central commitment under discussion, US officials say, is the disarming of Iran-backed Shia militias, a step that would test al-Zaidi’s ability to deliver on his “Iraq First” agenda. With no diplomatic track currently active and both Washington and Tehran entrenched in their military postures, the dossier remains open-ended; the next concrete indicator will be whether the Iraqi premier’s pledges translate into action against armed groups on the ground.