Motorists ride past a billboard depicting U.S. President Donald Trump inside a catering container, installed on a building along a street in downtown of Tehran on August 31, 2026. (AFP Photo)
Iran launched a wave of attacks on U.S. sites across the Middle East on Sept. 2, as violence surged after an extensive American bombardment and the deaths of four people at an Iranian wedding party.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced attacks on U.S. bases in Jordan, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, in the six-month conflict’s heaviest exchange in weeks.
U.S. President Donald Trump had warned earlier of “much harder and higher” attacks if Iran retaliated to the U.S. strikes, which Iran’s military and state media said killed 18 people.
The renewed attacks deepen the impasse in the war, where Iran maintains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz oil export route with the U.S. pressing a counter-blockade of Iranian ports.
In the latest strikes, the Iranian Red Crescent said on Sept. 1 that four people including a child were killed and more than 50 people were wounded by a U.S. attack while attending a wedding in Iran’s south.
A video shared by an Iranian government account showed extensive debris and damage at what it said was the wedding site in Sirik following a U.S. strike, with people heard screaming in the background.
Iran’s top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf lashed out at the United States, calling it “Satan.”
“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,” he posted on X.
The U.S. military did not address the wedding strike directly.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Tim Hawkins said “the U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The latest round of fighting began when Washington hit Iranian targets on Aug. 30, the first known strikes in several weeks.
US launches ‘tanker for tanker’ strategy
The strikes came as the Axios reported that Washington has adopted a new retaliatory strategy toward Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, under which the U.S. will target an Iranian oil tanker for every commercial vessel attacked by Tehran in the region.
Approved by Trump and dubbed the “tanker for tanker” policy, the strategy is designed to deter Iran from targeting commercial shipping by imposing direct costs on its oil sector, the report said.
Rather than simply defending vessels under attack, the policy establishes a direct response in which an Iranian tanker would be struck following each Iranian attack on commercial shipping.
The policy was put into practice when U.S. forces targeted the engine rooms of two Iranian oil tankers off Iran’s coast, disabling the vessels without sinking them.
