Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed U.S. pilots were killed in counterattacks against the U.S. targeting neighboring Arab states on Tuesday.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said strikes against IRGC targets began around 12:00 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, in response to “recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.”
“U.S. forces struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets including air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets, and facilities, mine-laying capabilities, and communications sites,” CENTCOM said.
Iran attacked civilian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday night. A Saudi-based shipping company called Bahri said on Wednesday that two Filipino crew members were killed in the attack on one of those ships, the supertanker Sidr, which was loaded with about two million barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia.
Iranian state media claimed that only four IRGC members were killed by the U.S. strikes on Tuesday, plus three members of the IRGC’s Basij militia, and four or five civilians at an alleged wedding party.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei denounced the U.S. strike as a “war crime.”
“The truth of this unlawful war of choice — and the true face of the war crime — is in Sirik, where a wedding ceremony was brutally bombed as part of America’s desperate struggle to conceal its failure,” Baqaei said.
Iranian state media published the names of the ostensible victims along with footage of a nearby telecommunications tower that could have been struck by a U.S. cruise missile.
“We’re aware of the reports, which originated from Iranian state media, and we are looking into them,” responded CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins.
“The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” Hawkins added.
The IRGC claimed its retaliatory actions included “a coordinated missile and drone attack on U.S. bases in Erbil,” the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, that allegedly destroyed warehouses, a maintenance center, and the “guidance system of a U.S. surveillance aerostat.”
Iran also claimed it conducted “heavy” airstrikes on drone hangars at the Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan during which “a number of pilots and flight maintenance crew members were killed” and multiple structures at the base were set on fire.
The IRGC also claimed to have caused heavy damage and casualties at the U.S. Marine barracks at Camp Tintin in Jordan. The Iranian military further said it attacked the Al Dhafra and Al Minhad airbases in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Sheikh Isa airbase in Bahrain with drones.
Officials in Jordan, the UAE, and Bahrain said most of Iran’s weapons were intercepted without significant damage. Two U.S. officials said on Wednesday that contrary to Iran’s claims, there were no American casualties from the Iranian attacks on Jordan.
The Jordanian Armed Forces said it engaged 13 Iranian ballistic missiles and destroyed ten of them with the other three coming down in remote areas. Emergency services in Kuwait said they were able to control a fire that was started by an Iranian drone striking a residential complex. Kurdish officials in Iraq said they intercepted 10 explosive-laden drones near Erbil.