Iran said it had struck US military bases in Kuwait and the UAE, promising retaliation for a wedding attack it blamed on Washington, while US Vice President JD Vance said the reported strike was under investigation.
The latest exchange of fire, following US raids on Sunday, has further complicated the six-month conflict. Iran continues to restrict traffic through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, while Washington pursues a counter-blockade aimed at Iranian ports.
Kuwait’s army said today that it had intercepted a missile and drone assault launched from Iran. Iran’s army, meanwhile, said it had targeted “the Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait”.
Kuwait condemned the attack as a “grave breach of the rules of international law”.
The strikes followed a statement from the Iranian Red Crescent that a missile attack on a wedding in the coastal town of Kuhestak on Tuesday night had killed four people, including a child, and injured more than 50 others.
Mr Vance said the United States was examining the allegation but questioned the credibility of reports emerging from Iran.
“I know that we’re investigating,” he told a White House briefing.
“I will say that the Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what’s happened in the conflict thus far. So I’m extremely sceptical of this,” he added.
JD Vance was speaking at a new conference in the White House
Mr Vance also rejected the description of the conflict as a war, despite the continuing clashes between the US and Iran.
“I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting,” Mr Vance said when asked whether the conflict would be over by the US midterm elections in November.
He acknowledged that fighting had erupted in several locations but said the major combat operations had lasted only six weeks after the US-Israel war began on 28 February.
“But when you ask when will this end, you’re asking me a question like when will the Iranians stop shooting at ships? I think the reality is I don’t know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians,” he said.
He maintained that Washington would not resume negotiations with Tehran until Iran stopped attacking commercial shipping.
Earlier, Iranian mourners carried the coffins of victims whose deaths were attributed to the strike at the wedding celebration.
Mourners gathered late in the afternoon outside Kuhestak village in Sirik County, along the Strait of Hormuz coast, an area that came under heavy US airstrikes late on Tuesday.
“This is the body of Martyr Amir-Mohammad Karimi, a 4-year-old child who was martyred in an attack on the country’s south by the criminal American regime,” a reporter from Iran’s Mehr news agency said in footage recorded beside a pickup truck carrying a coffin draped in a flag beneath a canopy of palmfronds.
Other footage showed mourners scattering flower petals as mournful music played through a loud speaker. One coffin was carried past soldiers standing at attention with rifles.
“If it was a military location, it wouldn’t be so painful. This was a wedding ceremony, but they turned people’s joy into mourning,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted a local man as saying.
Ahmad Vahidi, chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, vowed that the deaths would be avenged.
“The pure blood of these oppressed martyrs… will not go unanswered,” he said.
Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for US Central Command (CENTCOM), said “the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC”, referring to Iran’s Guards.
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Alongside its military campaign, the United States has pledged to squeeze Iran’s economy and warned that sanctions could be imposed on countries trading with Tehran.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Washington’s plan to widen sanctions against Iran’s economic partners would create “absolutely maximum pressure”.
President Trump suggested that the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping route Iran has effectively closed for six months, should be renamed “Trump Strait”.
He later appeared to indicate that the suggestion was not meant seriously.
“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???” he wrote on Truth Social.
Iran’s bombardment of US military positions around the region followed an American missile strike that Tehran said hit a wedding in the south, triggering outrage across the country.
The Iranian Red Crescent said shrapnel from the attack in Kuhestak killed four people, including a child, and left more than 50 wounded.
US ‘acts like Satan’ – Iran
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, condemned Washington and likened it to “Satan”.
“If a power acts like Satan, picks targets like Satan, and kills like Satan, it’s Satan,” he posted on social media.
Many Iranians voiced sorrow over the renewed violence.
A video released by an Iranian government account showed debris and damage at what it identified as the wedding venue in Kuhestak after the strike, while screams could be heard in the background.
“It is a very saddening incident,” Ali Mallahi, the bride’s father and the owner of the building that was hit, said in a video broadcast by state television.
“Thank God the casualties were not higher.”
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, meanwhile, said his country was ready to respond “with great force” if Iran attacked during the Jewish high holiday season, which begins in the middle of this month.
“For now, they are striking throughout the region except us,” Mr Katz told a conference hosted by Israeli media outlets.
Trump claims he saved UK from nuclear attack by attacking Iran
President Trump said his military campaign against Iran had protected the UK from a possible nuclear attack, while again criticising Britain for declining to enter the conflict.
Defending the war in an interview with UK broadcaster GB News, Mr Trump said: “I’m saving your country from the threat too.
“Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, they’re more likely to use it in Europe, where they do have missile capability, than they are in America, where they don’t.
“I’m saving your country from a problem because they would use it.”
Mr Trump also renewed his criticism of Britain’s reluctance, under former prime minister Keir Starmer, to become involved in the conflict, hinting that US support for the UK over the Falkland Islands could be reconsidered.
He said: “Don’t forget, you get a big percentage of your oil from the Strait of Hormuz, and you weren’t there to help me.”
