Retaliation

Iran launched a wave of attacks on US sites across the Middle East on Wednesday as violence surged after an extensive American bombardment and the deaths of four people at an Iranian wedding party. 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 of "much harder and higher" attacks if Iran retaliated to the US strikes, which Iran's military and state media said killed 18 people. 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," he posted on X.

Wedding deaths

The Iranian Red Crescent said four people including a child were killed and more than 50 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 the wedding site in Sirik, with people heard screaming in the background. US Central Command spokesman Tim Hawkins said "the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC."

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 drone." 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.