Zürcher Nachrichten - Iran attacks US sites after American strikes, wedding deaths

Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced attacks on US bases in Jordan, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, in the six-month conflict's heaviest exchange in weeks.

US President Donald Trump had warned earlier of "much harder and higher" attacks if Iran retaliated to the US strikes, which Iran's military and state media said killed 18 people.

The renewed attacks deepen the impasse in the war, where Iran maintains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz oil export route with the US pressing a counter-blockade of Iranian ports.

In the latest strikes, the Iranian Red Crescent said on Tuesday that four people including a child were killed and more than 50 people were wounded by a US attack while attending a wedding in Iran's south.

A video shared by an Iranian government account showed extensive debris and damage at what it said was the wedding site in Sirik following a US strike, with people heard screaming in the background.

Iran's top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf lashed out at the United States, calling it "Satan".

"If a power acts like Satan, picks targets like Satan, and kills like Satan, it's Satan. Shields a junior Satan that does the same? It's THE Great Satan," he posted on X.

The US military did not address the wedding strike directly.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Tim Hawkins said "the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC", referring to Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

- 'Large and powerful' -

The latest round of fighting began when Washington hit Iranian targets on Sunday, the first known strikes in several weeks.

Tehran's forces then targeted US troops in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, and projectiles struck two oil tankers in unclaimed attacks.

Trump said Sunday's "large and powerful" strikes were "in retaliation for the Iranians' failed attempt at adding sea mines to the Strait" and "the Iranians shooting eight missiles, all successfully knocked down, at our Military Base in Jordan".

More US strikes came on Tuesday, with Iranian state television reporting explosions in the country's south along the Hormuz strait and on an island in the Gulf, and that US forces hit an airport in the southern province of Kerman.

Seven people were killed and eight others wounded in a missile attack in the southern Khuzestan province, IRNA reported.

The IRGC said four members of its aerospace force were killed in a US strike in the western province of Kermanshah, and three paramilitaries died in an attack on Lavan island in the Gulf.

Iran's Guards said their retaliatory strikes included "a coordinated missile and drone attack on US bases in Erbil" that destroyed a maintenance centre, warehouses and the "guidance system of a US surveillance aerostat", according to a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency.

An AFP journalist reported hearing explosions near Erbil's airport, which hosts coalition troops.

The Guards also announced a ballistic missile attack on a US Marine training camp in Jordan on the Gulf of Aqaba, near the borders with Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to Iran's Tasnim news agency.

In the oil-rich Gulf, air raid sirens rang out across Bahrain and also Kuwait, where authorities said an Iranian drone set off a blaze at a residential complex. The fire was extinguished with no casualties, they said.

- Trump warning -

Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi had warned on X that Washington "will regret its new attacks", saying that "severe punishment awaits the aggressors".

The Middle East war began in late February with US-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran collapsed after attacks on commercial ships in the Hormuz strait, through which one-fifth of world oil supplies flowed before the war.

Incidents in the strait have continued, and Iran's Guards said Wednesday that two oil tankers caught fire after hitting mines "at the urging of the US military to transit via an illegal route".

Trump warned on his Truth Social platform Tuesday that if Iran retaliated to US attacks, "they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all".

"There will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!" he wrote.

Despite the diplomatic deadlock, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed on Tuesday to match any US move to return to a deal aimed at ending the war.

He also warned that a return by the United States to "a policy of pressure and threats could derail the path of diplomacy".

burs/th/jfx

A.Weber--NZN