Iran says a US strike hit a wedding, killing women and children, and it wants an international probe

The war between the United States and Iran has run past six months, and its deadliest civilian incidents keep landing on the same stretch of Iran’s southern coast. Iran’s Red Crescent Society has written to the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor asking it to investigate a September 1 US strike that hit a home in the coastal town of Kuhestak during a wedding celebration.

Iranian officials say the strike killed four people, two women and two children aged four and 16, and wounded at least 67 others, according to Al Jazeera. It happened as US forces carried out a wider round of attacks on Iranian air-defense systems, radar installations and maritime infrastructure along the coast, and a communications tower near the wedding site was also struck the same night.

CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said the military is aware of reports of civilian casualties and said American forces do not intentionally target civilians. However, the command has not acknowledged deliberately striking the house, nor confirmed that a formal investigation is underway.

Iran blames the US for killing civilians in the latest attack

A weapons expert reviewed photographs of fragments recovered from the scene and told the Associated Press they appeared to come from an American air-delivered precision-guided weapon. N.R. Jenzen-Jones said the debris was likely from a Joint Standoff Weapon, though he could not rule out a SLAM-ER cruise missile, and CENTCOM declined to comment when asked about the analysis.

The timeline around one of the victims is also being scrutinized. Iranian state media says all four deaths happened at the wedding house. However, the Balochistan Human Rights Documentation Network told the AP that the 16-year-old was killed by shrapnel while riding a motorcycle near the communications tower, not at the wedding itself. If that account holds up, it could change how investigators read the blast pattern and the sequence of strikes.

International humanitarian law requires militaries to distinguish between civilian objects and legitimate military targets and to take precautions that minimize harm. Intentionally attacking civilians can constitute a war crime, though experts note that civilian deaths alone don’t prove one occurred, as investigators would still need to establish what US forces believed they were targeting and whether the house was hit by accident or design.

Neither Iran nor the United States belongs to the ICC, so the court has no automatic jurisdiction over the strike. Iran could accept jurisdiction on an ad hoc basis under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, or the UN Security Council could refer the case. However, that route is considered unlikely given the US’s permanent Security Council seat and veto power. It’s important to note that the ICC prosecutes individuals rather than governments.

Kuhestak sits not far from Minab, where a US strike hit a girls’ school on February 28, killing more than 100 children. The Pentagon has yet to release its final findings on that strike, and officials have said it may have stemmed from outdated targeting information rather than a deliberate attack.

Iran’s Ministry of Health says 18 people were killed and 108 wounded in the broader strikes carried out the same night, and the United Nations has called for the fighting to stop. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was deeply alarmed by reports of the wedding strike and reminded both sides of their obligations around distinction, proportionality and precaution. Some Western allies have already broken with Washington over the civilian toll of the war, as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni did following the Minab strike.

As Iran has responded with drone and missile attacks on positions in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq, oil prices have climbed with the Strait of Hormuz remaining a flashpoint heading into the weekend.