(AFP) – Iran pushed ahead with strikes targeting American interests around the Middle East on Wednesday, vowing “severe” consequences to US attacks, including one that the Iranian Red Crescent said left four people dead at a wedding celebration.
The latest flare-up is part of a cycle of retaliation that followed US strikes on Iran, with fighting over the Hormuz strait expanding to Washington’s Gulf allies, military bases and commercial shipping. Tehran said it launched ballistic missile attacks on two US bases in Jordan, according to Iranian media. Washington did not immediately comment on the reports, although US President Donald Trump had warned earlier of “much harder and higher” attacks if Iran retaliated to US strikes.
The Jordanian army said it intercepted 10 ballistic missiles fired from Iran and did not confirm any injuries or hits. Three other missiles landed in remote areas, it said. Missile and drone attacks were also reported in Kuwait, where the army said they were responding to Iranian hostilities, and AFP reporters in Bahrain heard alert sirens for airborne attacks ring out early Wednesday. Iran’s army said it launched drone attacks targeting US forces at an air base in Bahrain, a key Washington ally in the Gulf.
In Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Wednesday that they struck US bases with missiles and drones, destroying a maintenance center, warehouses, and equipment, state-run IRNA reported. The latest round of conflict began when Washington hit Iranian targets on Sunday, the first known strikes in several weeks, after which Tehran’s forces targeted US troops in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, and projectiles struck two oil tankers in unclaimed attacks.
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. The Iranian Red Crescent said shrapnel from a US missile attack hit a home where a wedding celebration was taking place in the city of Kuhestak, killing four people, including a child, and wounding more than 50. And IRNA reported that “four projectiles hit areas within the counties of Chabahar and Konarak,” without specifying whether there was any damage.
Trump said the “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.” He later said on Truth Social that he was “not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table” and asked: “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”
Earlier, Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi warned on X that Washington “will regret its new attacks,” saying that “severe punishment awaits the aggressors.” And Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam-al Anbiya central military command, warned Wednesday that “any country that cooperates with the aggressive American army will face more severe, more widespread, and destructive responses.”
The US military said Tuesday’s strikes followed “attempted attacks by (the Revolutionary Guards) against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region,” the US Central Command (CENTCOM) wrote on X. Asked if the US military had received any credible reports of civilian casualties in the attacks, CENTCOM spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins said “the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
After six months of war, the foes remain at an impasse, with Iran keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed and the United States persisting with a counter-blockade of Iranian ports. Washington said its forces attacked Iranian rocket launchers on the island of Larak on Sunday to prevent Tehran from planting mines in the strait’s key shipping lanes.
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. Greek maritime risk management firm Marisks said Tuesday that two crude tankers were hit by “unknown projectiles” late the previous day. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency registered one of the incidents earlier, adding that no casualties or environmental effects had been reported.
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.”
– W.G. Dunlop with AFP bureaus in Tehran and Vienna
© 2024 AFP
