Iran said Thursday it struck US military bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, vowing revenge for a wedding attack it blamed on Washington, as US Vice President JD Vance said the strike was under investigation.
The new clashes, which began with US raids on Sunday, have deepened the impasse in the six-month war, with Iran maintaining a stranglehold on the strategic Strait of Hormuz as Washington presses its counter-blockade of Iranian ports.
Kuwait’s army said Thursday it intercepted a missile and drone attack from Iran, while the Iranian army reported it had hit US assets at the Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base “with missiles and drones.” Kuwait called the strikes 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, though the Gulf country reported no such attack. The strikes followed a missile attack on a wedding in the Iranian coastal town of Kuhestak on Tuesday night, which the Iranian Red Crescent said killed four people, including a child, and wounded more than 50.
Vance said Washington was investigating the alleged strike but voiced scepticism about the reports coming out of Tehran. “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.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief, Ahmad Vahidi, vowed on Thursday to avenge the victims of the wedding attack. “The pure blood of these oppressed martyrs… will not go unanswered,” he said.
US Central Command spokesman Tim Hawkins pushed back, saying “the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
