The United States carried out a fresh round of airstrikes against Iranian military targets on Tuesday, and Tehran answered within hours with missiles and drones against American-linked bases in three countries, reopening a war that had gone quiet for most of August. The exchange left the wider Gulf on edge again, six months after the conflict first erupted.
U.S. Central Command said the strikes hit Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps air-defense sites, radar installations and maritime assets, and were launched in response to what it called recent IRGC attempts to mine and attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz as well as threats against American troops stationed in the region. "The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC," CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said, previewing the dispute over casualties that would follow within hours.
A Wedding Turned to Mourning
Iranian state television said the strikes also hit a fishmeal factory on Qeshm Island and several civilian-facing sites in Hormozgan province, including a fishing pier and a Ports and Maritime Organization tower in Sirik. The deadliest single incident came in the town of Kuhestak, where officials said shrapnel from a U.S. strike tore into a house where a wedding was underway. Iran's Red Crescent put the toll at four dead, including a child, and more than 50 wounded; Hormozgan's deputy governor, Ahmad Nafisi, gave a higher count of five killed and 68 injured. The Revolutionary Guard described the strike as turning "the marriage celebration of a young and respected Sunni couple into mourning."
Iran's retaliation came on three fronts. Ballistic missiles were fired at a U.S. base near Jordan's Gulf of Aqaba coast; Jordan's military said it intercepted ten of them, with three more landing in unpopulated areas. The IRGC also launched drones at American positions in Bahrain and at a base in Kuwait, where officials said a drone strike started a fire in a residential complex in Kuwait City but caused no casualties. Revolutionary Guard spokesman Hossein Mohebbi warned that "severe punishment awaits the aggressors," and Iranian officials threatened to choke off oil exports from the Gulf altogether if Washington widened what they called its "siege."
The renewed fighting is the latest turn in a war that began on February 28, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. A ceasefire brokered in June, built around the so-called Islamabad Memorandum, collapsed after its 60-day negotiating window expired without a follow-on agreement, and fighting has flared intermittently ever since around the strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world's traded oil passes — including Sunday's exchange of fire near the strait that broke the month-long pause before Tuesday's larger barrage.
Threats of Deeper Strikes
President Trump, writing on Truth Social, said the strikes targeted Iranian positions near the strait in response to a failed attempt to lay sea mines and to the missile fire on Jordan, and asked pointedly, "When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?" — a comment that drew immediate condemnation from Tehran. He warned of further and heavier strikes if Iran retaliated again. Iran's military leadership responded in kind, vowing "crushing and devastating blows" against American forces in the region.
Not every signal from Tehran was combative. President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran was ready to return to the terms of the Islamabad Memorandum "immediately" if Washington did the same, an opening that several regional diplomats have pointed to as the likeliest off-ramp from the current escalation. Iran's foreign ministry, meanwhile, accused the United States of being "addicted to making excessive demands," underscoring how far apart the two sides remain on the terms of any durable truce.
For now, both governments appear to be preparing for more fighting rather than negotiation. Gulf shipping insurers have already begun repricing risk through the strait, and CENTCOM has not said whether it plans additional strikes in the coming days. With casualty figures from Tuesday's wedding strike still disputed and Iran's leadership publicly committed to retaliation, the immediate question is whether either side moves first toward de-escalation — or toward the wider war that officials on both sides have spent six months threatening.
