US investigating strike on wedding in Iran, Vance says
· RTE.ieIran said it hit US military bases in Kuwait and the UAE, vowing to avenge a wedding attack it blamed on Washington as US Vice President JD Vance said the strike was being investigated.
The new clashes, which began with US raids on Sunday, have deepened the impasse in the six-month war, as Iran maintains a stranglehold on the strategic Strait of Hormuz and Washington presses its counter-blockade of Iranian ports.
Kuwait's army said today that it intercepted a missile and drone attack from Iran, with the Iranian army reporting that it hit "the Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait".
Kuwait called the attack a "grave breach of the rules of international law".
Iran's army also said it struck Al Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, but the Gulf country reported no such attack.
The strikes came after the Iranian Red Crescent said a missile attack on a wedding in the Iranian coastal town of Kuhestak killed four people on Tuesday night, including a child, and wounded more than 50.
Mr Vance said Washington was probing the alleged strike but cast doubt on reports out of 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.
Mr Vance told reporters he would not categorise the Iran war as a war, despite the continuing clashes with Iran.
"I wouldn't call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting," Mr Vance said when asked if the war would be over by US midterm elections in November.
Mr Vance added: "I recognise there have been places where this has flared up" but said major combat operations only lasted for six weeks after the US-Israel war started 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 insisted that the United States would not reopen talks with Iran until it ended attacks on commercial shipping.
Earlier, Iranian mourners carried caskets at a funeral for the victims of the strike said at the wedding party.
Mourners assembled in the late afternoon outside the village of Kuhestak in Sirik County, along a stretch of the coast of the Strait of Hormuz that was hit by 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 filmed in front of a pickup truck carrying a flag-draped coffin beneath a canopy of palmfronds.
In other footage of the funeral, mourners threw petals into the air as doleful music played from a loud speaker. A casket was carried past a row of 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.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards chief Ahmad Vahidi vowed to avenge the victims of the wedding attack.
"The pure blood of these oppressed martyrs... will not go unanswered," he said.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Tim Hawkins said "the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC", referring to Iran's Guards.
Aside from military action, the US has vowed to choke Iran's economy, threatening to slap sanctions on its trade partners.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright pledged that a plan by Washington for expanded sanctions, targeting Tehran's economic partners, would deliver "absolutely maximum pressure".
President Trump suggested renaming the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic shipping lane that Iran has effectively shut for six months, as "Trump Strait".
He later implied that he was not serious.
"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 pummelling of US military targets across the region came after an American missile attack that hit a wedding in the country's south, prompting fury from Tehran.
The Iranian Red Crescent said shrapnel from the assault, in the coastal town of Kuhestak, killed four people, including a child, and wounded more than 50.
US 'acts like Satan' - Iran
Iran's top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf attacked the US, describing it as "Satan".
"If a power acts like Satan, picks targets like Satan, and kills like Satan, it's Satan," he posted on social media.
Iranians expressed regret at the return to hostilities.
A video shared by an Iranian government account showed debris and damage at what it said was the wedding venue in Kuhestak following the strike, with people heard screaming in the background.
"It is a very saddening incident," Ali Mallahi, father of the bride and owner of the building that was hit, said in a video carried by state television.
"Thank God the casualties were not higher."
Meanwhile, Israel's defence minister Israel Katz said that his country was prepared to respond "with great force" if attacked by Iran over 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 he has saved the UK from nuclear attack by waging war against Iran as he again hit out at Britain for refusing to be drawn into the conflict.
Justifying the war, Mr Trump told UK broadcaster GB News: "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 again poured scorn on Britain's reluctance under former prime minister Keir Starmer to be drawn into the Iran conflict, as he hinted the US may pull support for the UK over the Falkland Islands in response.
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."