The U.S. launched a barrage of airstrikes against Iran on Tuesday, prompting Iranian retaliation, in the most serious escalation in weeks in a conflict that has driven up global energy prices and weighed on President Donald Trump’s popularity at home.
The strikes followed a weekend exchange of fire — the first since July — and attacks on Monday on two tankers leaving the Strait of Hormuz, the global oil supply waterway that Iran has effectively closed to shipping. Global oil prices rose more than $4 a barrel on Tuesday, settling at a five-week high.
Tehran struck back at U.S. assets in Jordan, Bahrain and Iraq and remained defiant, warning that it would prevent oil being exported from the Gulf, despite a threat by Trump to hit Iran “hard” and a warning from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Washington was about to impose new sanctions.
Five people were killed and 50 wounded at a wedding near Sirik, a coastal area on the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian Red Crescent reported. The Mehr news agency said a 4-year-old child was among those killed, while the IRNA news agency, citing a provincial official, put the number of wounded at 68.
There was no immediate U.S. reaction to the reports.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement the U.S. attacks would “tighten the lock” on the Strait of Hormuz, which carried one of every five barrels of the world’s oil before the war.
“If the enemy wants us not to export oil from the Persian Gulf, no one will be able to export oil,” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
Neither threats of strikes nor new economic sanctions appear to have materially changed the position of Tehran, which has been under heavy economic sanctions for half a century.
The U.S. strikes followed a month of relative calm in which the U.S. and Iran mostly held their fire while exchanging hostile statements.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said it had completed a wave of strikes against IRGC targets on Tuesday including air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine-laying capabilities, and communications sites.