The United States and Iran have become involved again, after 31 days of calm, in a spiral of clashes that has claimed the lives of 19 Iranians, at least four of them civilians, according to Tehran. Among the dead, who were attending a wedding on Tuesday night in the small coastal town of Kuhestak, in the province of Hormozgan, facing the Strait of Hormuz, were a four-year-old boy and a 16-year-old teenager. The Iranian Crescent said that 67 more people were injured in this attack and that the death toll may increase due to the critical condition of some of them.
Local witnesses claim that, late at night, two hours after the United States launched new attacks near the Strait, they heard the sound of several fighter-bombers, although other people speak of two drones. Minutes later, a missile hit the house where at that time numerous people, including children, were already gathered.
“Unfortunately it is a residential building and, unfortunately, this happened during my daughter's wedding ceremony,” Ali Mallahi, the bride's father, told local television. As can be seen thanks to geolocation, Mallahi's house is located 130 meters from a communications tower that would be one of the targets of the attack. Videos circulating on social networks show the demolished tower but also the crater left by the impact of the missile in the one-story house, as well as the destruction in its surroundings.
“This is the true face of war crime,” stated the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baqaei, on his social networks. "More dangerous than the bomb itself is the normalization of bombings; and more dangerous than silence is the conversion of silence into legitimacy. Iran will respond firmly to these savage crimes," Baqaei added on the X social network.
This Wednesday, Iranian television has also shown the remains of the missile that according to the British BBC, citing a weapons expert, belong to an AGM-84 (SLAM-ER) missile that is usually used by the US army.
“They say it's a Revolutionary Guard base, but it's just a wedding,” said a local, showing a video in which the remains of the attack appear, including the white sandal of one of the attendees. "We were on our way to the wedding when we heard the sound of a fighter jet. When we arrived there was an explosion and when I came to my senses I saw a person whose head had been hit by a cement block and was unconscious," one of the witnesses told Iranian television from the hospital in the town of Minab, to which the injured were transferred. “Many children and many women are seriously ill,” insisted the man, who had his head covered with a bandage.
The images also show children being treated at the same hospital. The mother of Amir Ali, the four-year-old boy who died during the attack, told the official Irna news agency that she generally did not take him to these types of events because he was very restless, but that that day her son was very eager to attend and convinced her to take him.
“The US military never attacks civilians, unlike the Islamic Revolutionary Guard,” they said from the US central command, CENTCOM. The Iranian Red Crescent, for its part, sent a letter to the International Criminal Court calling for an “independent, impartial, thorough and effective” investigation into this bombing.
What happened on Tuesday has reminded Iranians of the most tragic episode that the country has experienced since the United States and Israel launched a new war against Iran on February 28. That day, a US missile hit a school in the city of Minab, an hour's drive from the site of Tuesday's attack and very close to a Revolutionary Guard base.
Later investigations revealed that the Americans had used outdated information. In the past the building had been part of the military complex, but it had been functioning as a school for years. As it became known later, a US analyst warned of the change in 2019, but the information never reached the database used to select military targets. According to Amnesty International, the attack left 156 dead, 120 of them children.
“With these struggles, not only will they not be able to get out of the hell they have created, but they will soon see that Iran's new strategy on the battlefield, in diplomacy and in the face of the economic blockade will destroy their foundations,” promised General Mohsen Rezaí, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the country's highest decision-making body after the supreme leader.
The official was referring to the new punitive economic measures announced last week by the United States, which target companies and countries that continue to do business with Iran.
More attacks and more deaths
And also to the resumption of military attacks. Because in addition to the bombing in Kuhestak, the American attacks hit dozens of other targets in which there were also fatalities. Among the dead are four members of the Revolutionary Guard from the city of Kermanshah, in northwestern Iran, and three Basij militiamen, a paramilitary force, on the island of Lavan. Seven more people were also reported dead in the southern province of Khuzestan and one in the town of Jahrom in the central province of Fars.
Tehran has responded to these attacks and has announced bombings against several of the Persian Gulf countries that host US military installations or personnel such as Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait. The Revolutionary Guard has claimed, for its part, to have killed US soldiers at a military base in Jordan, a report that two US officials have denied.
There have also been no reports of deaths in a missile and drone attack on Kuwait's Ali Al Salem air base, which targeted the quarters of a US commander. Kuwait's fire service has assured that its troops extinguished a fire in a residential complex in the capital early on Wednesday, after it was hit by an Iranian drone, which caused material damage but no deaths. Bahrain has also confirmed having been the target of an attack without fatalities. The authorities of the Arab kingdom have announced that they have intercepted and destroyed several Iranian drones.
The Pulse of Hormuz
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 began an offensive directed, according to its version, against “targets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” The stated goal is to counter Iran's “attempts of aggression” “against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and against U.S. military service members deployed in the region.”
The fundamental battle between both countries continues to be, as has been the case since the beginning of the conflict, the control of the Strait of Hormuz, which has become for Tehran its main measure of pressure in the war. This asset has allowed Iran to paralyze a large part of the oil exports of the rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf.
