Iran launched retaliatory attacks on U.S. sites across the Middle East on Wednesday after American strikes, and the people caught in the middle were the ones paying the bill: a wedding in Sirik, a residential complex in Kuwait, air raid sirens in Bahrain, and military sites from Jordan to Erbil. The Revolutionary Guards said they hit U.S. bases in Jordan, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and the northern Iraq autonomous region. The latest exchange marked the heaviest fighting in weeks in a six-month conflict that has widened across the region.
Civilian Life Under State Fire
The Iranian Red Crescent said four people, including a child, were killed and more than 50 were wounded when shrapnel from a U.S. missile attack hit a home where a wedding celebration was taking place in Kuhestak. Daily Sabah said the attack killed four people at a wedding in Iran's south, while Iranian state media reported seven people were killed and eight others wounded in a missile attack in the southern Khuzestan province. The National News said Iranian state media claimed seven people were killed in the U.S. attacks. The reports differed on the casualty count. The numbers wobble. The dead don't.
Iranian state television reported explosions in the country's south along the Hormuz strait and on an island in the Gulf, and said U.S. forces hit an airport in the southern province of Kerman. IRNA reported that four projectiles hit areas within the counties of Chabahar and Konarak, without specifying whether there was any damage. The IRGC said four members of its aerospace force were killed in a U.S. strike in the western province of Kermanshah and three paramilitaries died in an attack on Lavan island in the Gulf. Across the board, the state apparatus on each side counts bodies, names targets, and leaves ordinary people to absorb the blast radius.
Bases, Sirens, and the Machinery of Retaliation
Iran's Guards said their retaliatory strikes included a coordinated missile and drone attack on U.S. bases in Erbil that destroyed a maintenance center, warehouses and the guidance system of a U.S. surveillance aerostat, according to a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency. An AFP journalist reported hearing explosions near Erbil's airport, which hosts coalition troops. The Guards also announced a ballistic missile attack on a U.S. Marine training camp in Jordan on the Gulf of Aqaba, near the borders with Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to Iran's Tasnim news agency.
In Kuwait, authorities said an Iranian drone set off a blaze at a residential complex, and they said the fire was extinguished with no casualties. Air raid sirens rang out across Bahrain and Kuwait. AFP reporters in Bahrain heard alert sirens for airborne attacks ring out early Wednesday. 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. The state monopoly on force keeps expanding its address book.
Washington did not immediately comment on the reports. U.S. President Donald Trump had warned earlier of "much harder and higher" attacks if Iran retaliated to U.S. strikes. Trump said Sunday's "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?" Trump warned on his Truth Social platform Tuesday that if Iran retaliated to U.S. attacks, "they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all." He added, "There will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!" The language is blunt. The logic is older than the platform.
The State Speaks in Threats
Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi warned on X that Washington "will regret its new attacks," saying that "severe punishment awaits the aggressors." 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." Iran's top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf called the United States "Satan" in a post on X, writing: "If a power acts like Satan, picks targets like Satan, and kills like Satan, it's Satan. Shields a junior Satan that does the same? It's THE Great Satan."
The National News said Israel's military claimed it intercepted a suspected aerial target from Lebanon. It also said seven IRGC fighters were killed in U.S. attacks, state media said, and that power cuts were reported in parts of Iran after the strikes. The National News also reported that Bessent said the Strait of Hormuz will be "worthless" in two years. Even the shipping lane gets treated like a bargaining chip.
The latest round of fighting began when Washington hit Iranian targets on Sunday, the first known strikes in several weeks. Tehran's forces then targeted U.S. troops in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, and projectiles struck two oil tankers in unclaimed attacks. More U.S. strikes came Tuesday, with Iranian state television reporting explosions in the country's south along the Hormuz strait and on an island in the Gulf. The Iranian Red Crescent said the wedding strike happened in Sirik in Hormozgan province. Daily Sabah said a video shared by an Iranian government account showed extensive debris and damage at what it said was the wedding site in Sirik, with people heard screaming in the background.
The Middle East war began in late February with U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Daily Sabah. A fragile cease-fire 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. Incidents in the strait have continued, and Iran's Guards said Wednesday that two oil tankers caught fire after hitting mines "at the urging of the U.S. military to transit via an illegal route." The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency registered one of the incidents earlier and said no casualties or environmental effects had been reported. Greek maritime risk management firm Marisks said Tuesday that two crude tankers were hit by "unknown projectiles" late the previous day.
Despite the diplomatic deadlock, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed Tuesday to match any U.S. 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." The path, such as it is, keeps running through bases, tankers, and homes.