(AFP) – US forces launched fresh attacks on Iran Tuesday, including one that the Iranian Red Crescent said left four people dead at a wedding celebration, with Tehran vowing “severe punishment” for the strikes. Washington hit Iranian targets on Sunday in its 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 that explosions were heard in the country’s south along the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway 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. The official IRNA news agency stated that “four projectiles hit areas within the counties of Chabahar and Konarak,” without specifying whether there was any damage.
Asked if the US military had received any credible reports of civilian casualties from the Tuesday strikes, US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins said, “the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. CENTCOM had earlier said on X that the strikes followed “recent attempted attacks by (the Revolutionary Guards) against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.”
US President Donald 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.” “If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi warned on X that Washington “will regret its new attacks,” saying that “severe punishment awaits the aggressors.” Iran’s Tasnim news agency later reported that a “decisive operation by Iran’s armed forces in response to the US enemy has begun,” and that “US bases and interests in the region are being targeted by Iranian missiles and drones.” Jordan’s army said in a statement that its air defenses had intercepted 10 ballistic missiles launched from Iran while three others landed in remote areas, adding that no casualties were reported.
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 the US and 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 Strait of Hormuz, 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. One of the incidents had been publicized earlier by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency, which added that no casualties or environmental effects had been reported. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian meanwhile vowed 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
