DUBAI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Iran fired on U.S. allies in the Gulf early Wednesday following a night of American bombardment that Iranian officials say included a deadly strike on a wedding party.<\/p>\n
The latest violence came after a monthlong lull in fighting. The six-month war has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and posed increasing political problems for President Trump\u2019s Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections.<\/p>\n
Fighting has escalated since the American military hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, saying Iran was planning to use them to shoot mines into the waterway. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan that were intercepted.<\/p>\n
American military resources are stretched and political pressure in Washington is mounting, while Iran\u2019s economy falters. Iran\u2019s currency hit another record low on Wednesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging 2.20 million rials for one U.S. dollar, a 10% hike from last week\u2019s record.<\/p>\n
Neither side can continue indefinitely between full-scale war and a truce, said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point, one of the sides may see a need to escalate in order to break this cycle,\u201d he cautioned. \u201cSo that could bring the two sides to a point that they have been trying to avoid until now, which is a full-scale war.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. allies in the region fend off Iranian attacks<\/p>\n
The latest flare-up in violence came as the standoff seemed to be shifting slightly more in the U.S.\u2019 favor, with the price of oil around $80 a barrel and Iranian leaders talking about growing economic hardships, said Sascha Bruchmann, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies\u2019 Middle East office in Bahrain. <\/p>\n
Last week, U.S. Central Command\u2019s Adm. Brad Cooper said the strait had been secretly cleared of mines and that the U.S. Navy had helped nearly 1,500 commercial vessels carrying some 750 million barrels of oil pass through in recent months \u2014 still far below prewar levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe basically told the world oil is flowing out and Iran is not capable of restricting the U.S.\u2019s approach,\u201d Bruchmann said. \u201cThe U.S. is trying to reinstall some kind of confidence into the global oil markets \u2026 and the Iranians had to respond to that by reinserting insecurity and doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the fighting resumed, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, has climbed to around $95, up more than 30% from the start of the war.<\/p>\n
Following its strikes at Jordan, Iran also fired drones at Kuwait late Tuesday that were intercepted. On Monday, the United Arab Emirates said it had intercepted an incoming Iranian drone over its waters.<\/p>\n
Bahrain, which hosts an important U.S. naval base, said its air defense systems intercepted incoming fire from Iran early Wednesday, accusing Iran of \u201cattacks targeting civilians\u201d in a statement issued by its military.<\/p>\n
Also on Wednesday, Kuwait said a fire broke out at a residential complex in the capital after it was hit by an Iranian drone at dawn. It said the blaze had been contained and there were no casualties.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will soon see that Iran\u2019s new strategy on the battlefield, in diplomacy, and in confronting the economic blockade will shatter your foundations,\u201d the recently appointed head of Iran\u2019s powerful Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said on X. <\/p>\n
In Iraq, where Iranian-backed forces are active, Kurdish authorities said they had intercepted 10 drones laden with explosives in the Irbil area. Iranian television reported that American bases in Irbil had been targeted. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s military also said that Iran-backed Hezbollah fired two explosive drones at its soldiers in southern Lebanon, without causing casualties. <\/p>\n
The U.S. Central Command said Tuesday\u2019s strikes focused on Iranian military targets, including air defense sites, radar systems and maritime assets.<\/p>\n
Casualties in Iran include people at a wedding party<\/p>\n
One U.S. strike hit a home hosting a wedding in Kuhestak, a small coastal town overlooking the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian media. At least five people were killed, including two women and two children aged four and 16, and at least 68 were wounded, Iranian officials said. <\/p>\n
Several heavy explosions shook Kuhestak, with fireballs that lit up the night sky, according to security camera footage carried by the semiofficial Fars news agency.<\/p>\n
Images from Iran\u2019s semiofficial Tasnim news agency showed several hospitalized children being treated for injuries at a hospital in the nearby town of Minab, where a U.S. missile strike on the opening day of the war hit a primary school, killing more than 100 children.<\/p>\n
Footage from the Iranian Red Crescent showed rescue workers entering a damaged home in the wake of the strike. It showed a hole in the roof of one house in a neighborhood of densely packed homes.<\/p>\n
Two weapons experts told The Associated Press that images of fragments of a missile, which Iranian media said was used in the strike, were from a U.S.-made SLAM-ER cruise missile.<\/p>\n
Trevor Ball, conflict researcher at the investigative group Bellingcat, said the SLAM-ER was \u201cdeveloped as a very precise weapon\u201d that can be retargeted in flight by a human operator watching by infrared camera. <\/p>\n
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, said the air-launched missile is also used by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Neither has reported carrying out any recent strikes on Iran. <\/p>\n
\u201cMake no mistake: these crimes will not go unpunished,\u201d Ebrahim Azizi, chairperson of the Iranian parliament\u2019s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said on X. <\/p>\n
The U.S. military said it was aware of the report but that it \u201cnever targets civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Separately, Iran has said four members of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and 10 members of the Guard\u2019s volunteer Basij forces died in the U.S. attacks. <\/p>\n
The Strait of Hormuz remains largely shut down<\/p>\n
During last month\u2019s lull in fighting, the U.S. ramped up economic pressure on Iran, which is suffering from soaring inflation, negative growth and a collapsing currency, as Washington sought to fully open the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
About a fifth of the world\u2019s traded oil was shipped through the key waterway before Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28 and Iran largely shut it down in response. Despite many pronouncements from Washington that the strait is open, only a handful of ships are making the passage each day and Iran has regularly attacked vessels.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Saudi shipping company Bahri said two Filipino sailors were killed in an attack late Monday as their vessel transited the strait. <\/p>\n
A ceasefire deal reached in June quickly fell apart amid exchanges of strikes that same month. Mediator Pakistan has been working to restart talks.<\/p>\n
Late Tuesday, Trump said he would not force Iran to the bargaining table. <\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?\u201d Trump wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
Rising and Magdy write for the Associated Press. Magdy reported from Cairo. AP journalists Lee Keath and Fatma Khaled in Cairo, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, and Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq contributed to this story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Iran fired on U.S. allies in the Gulf early Wednesday following a night of American bombardment that Iranian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[32135,711,3815,48243,266,7658,102,34,75122,179,75121,882,1219,3981,2863],"class_list":["post-275169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-deadly-strike","tag-drone","tag-fighting","tag-full-scale-war","tag-global-economy","tag-home","tag-hormuz","tag-iran","tag-irbil-area","tag-military","tag-monthlong-lull","tag-oil-price","tag-strait","tag-u-s-dollar","tag-wednesday"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117202271804659354","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}