The United States and Iran have clashed again this week in a new wave of attacks and mutual reprisals, the worst in a month, while Washington threatens to carry out bloodier attacks. After the U.S. military announced on Tuesday that it had bombed numerous military targets in Iran, Tehran responded by announcing new attacks on Tuesday night and early Wednesday against several Persian Gulf countries hosting U.S. military facilities or personnel such as Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
As has been the case since the beginning of the war on February 28, the versions of both enemies about these attacks differ. While the United States Central Command in the Middle East (CENTCOM) claims to have hit only military targets, especially those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful parallel Iranian army, the Islamic Republic accuses the United States of having attacked exclusively civilian targets, such as a house where a wedding was taking place.
According to Iranian authorities, at least 18 people, mostly civilians, have died in this latest U.S. assault — four of them at the mentioned wedding ceremony — and another 68 have been injured.
The Revolutionary Guard has claimed, for its part, to have killed U.S. soldiers at a military base in Jordan in an attack in retaliation for Washington’s bombings. However, two U.S. officials have denied those alleged casualties among their ranks.
No deaths have been reported either in a missile and drone attack against the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait, aimed at the accommodation of a U.S. commander. Kuwait’s fire service has stated that its personnel extinguished a fire in a residential complex in the capital early Wednesday after being hit by an Iranian drone, which caused material damage but no deaths. Bahrain has also confirmed it was the target of an attack without casualties. The authorities of the Arab kingdom announced they intercepted and destroyed several Iranian drones.
Iranian media have specified that the U.S. night attacks hit the strategic port of Chabahar, in the Gulf of Oman, as well as Bandar Abbas, opposite the Strait of Hormuz. Explosions were also reported in various places along the coast, including Qeshm Island, where explosions were heard near the commercial airport. According to the official Iranian version and witnesses in that area, the attacks caused considerable damage. CENTCOM, for its part, stated that the targets were Iranian defense points, radar systems, and communication centers, among others.
A wedding ceremony
The worst episode in Iran, in terms of human consequences, occurred in the small town of Kuhestak, in Hormozgan province, where the Iranian Red Crescent reported the death of at least four people — including a child — while attending a wedding. Another 53 people were injured in the same attack.
According to the version reported by the Iranian press, the target was a communications tower located in a residential area that was destroyed. The first data known indicate that fragments of a missile hit the house where the ceremony was taking place.
In the images that quickly circulated on Iranian social networks, destroyed homes and cars can be seen, and civilians helping the injured. “In a blind and desperate attack, the United States attacked different places and also civilians,” said the Revolutionary Guard spokesman in statements collected this morning by the semi-official Fars agency. “[The United States] will regret the new attacks,” the spokesman concluded.
The spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ismail Bagaei, also described the attack on the wedding in Hormozgan as an “atrocity,” an action he compared to the bombing of a school in the southern city of Minab on the first day of the war, February 28, in which 168 people died, including children and teachers.
“More dangerous than the bomb itself is the normalization of bombings; and more dangerous than silence is turning silence into legitimacy. Iran will respond firmly to these savage crimes,” Bagaei stated on the social network X.
The Strait of Hormuz standoff
The new peak of tension between the United States and Iran began in the early hours of Monday when Washington attacked Iran for the first time since July and launched an offensive aimed, according to its version, at “targets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” The declared objective is to counter Iran’s “attempts of aggression” against “commercial maritime transport in the Strait of Hormuz, and against U.S. military service members deployed in the region.” Tehran responded with attacks on Tuesday and early Wednesday against Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq.
The fundamental standoff between the two countries remains, as it has been since the beginning of the conflict, control of the Strait of Hormuz, which has become Tehran’s main leverage in the war. This card has allowed Iran to paralyze much of the oil exports of the wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies.
However, in recent weeks, the United States has managed to restore part of the maritime traffic through the strait along a southern route near Oman, according to experts in oil and the Middle East, although export figures prior to the start of the war have not yet been recovered, when one-fifth of the world’s crude passed through this crucial maritime route.
