The United States is investigating whether its forces were responsible for a deadly strike on a wedding in southern Iran, Vice President JD Vance said Thursday, as evidence emerged suggesting the building may have been directly hit by a US munition.
“We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,” Vance told reporters in Washington.
“If we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran, when our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them,” he added.
The explosion ripped through a residential building hosting a wedding in the small town of Kuhestak in Sirik County on Tuesday, during a new wave of US strikes along Iran’s Strait of Hormuz coast.
Iranian authorities said at least 68 people were wounded. A four-year-old child was among those reported dead. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei described the wedding strike as a “war crime.”
CENTCOM said Wednesday it was already looking into reports of the incident but rejected allegations that American forces deliberately target civilians.
“We’re aware of the reports, which originated from Iranian state media, and we are looking into them,” US Navy Captain Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, told Iran International. “The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC.”
CENTCOM said its forces carried out multiple strikes across southern Iran on Sept. 1, targeting Revolutionary Guard air-defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites.
On Thursday, Reuters published an analysis by four weapons experts who said the damage was more consistent with a direct hit than a ricochet from another target.
Three assessed that the munition was likely American rather than an errant Iranian air-defense missile. One said a US weapon may simply have missed its intended target.
Those assessments are not definitive, and the US investigation remains ongoing.
Reuters cited a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, as saying investigators were considering several possible causes, including a US strike, a US munition ricocheting from another target, or an Iranian air-defense missile or interceptor going astray.
The incident has renewed scrutiny of the civilian toll of the US-Iran war, six months after a missile struck a primary school in Minab, killing scores of children and teachers, according to Iranian authorities.
Washington did not publicly accept responsibility for the Minab strike.
Reuters reported in March, however, that an initial internal US military investigation found American forces were likely responsible.
The Pentagon has not publicly released the findings of that investigation.
While two of those players are building new lives in Australia, thousands of kilometers from their families, having received citizenship there, the Islamic Republic's football federation has summoned their former teammates to record the state's account of the same events.
Farideh Shojaei, the federation's vice-president for women's football, has confirmed that a documentary about Iran's participation in the AFC Women's Asian Cup will be filmed at the camp. She described the purpose as completing the tournament archive and setting down part of the history of Iranian women's football.
The outlet Football 360 had reported earlier that the project belongs to a body outside football, and that most of the players who returned from Australia have no wish to sit in front of the federation's camera and recount what happened on that trip.
A camp that does not add up
The camp has pushed back the start of Iran's women's premier league by a week, and the federation's explanations for holding it have not been consistent.
According to Iranian media, when club coaches objected to the timing, Shojaei assured them the players would not be put under any football training load, because the point of the camp was to film the documentary. Later, explaining why a camp was being held outside a FIFA international window with no fixture ahead of the national team, she said it had been convened at the request of Marzieh Jafari, the national coach, to prepare the players.
Jafari does not currently hold an active contract with the federation. She is head coach of Khatoon Bam, the club that supplies the core of the national squad, which has just come through Asian Champions League qualifying and now needs to prepare for a new league season.
So a camp that has forced clubs to rearrange their calendars is attributed to a coach with no active federation contract, and was described to the objecting coaches as not being about training at all.
The version the state told first
The documentary is being made several months after Iranian officials gave their own account of what happened in Australia.
In the team's final days there, federation president Mehdi Taj claimed Australian police had separated the women from the men in the delegation and pressured the players into staying and claiming asylum. Esmail Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesman, went further on television, accusing the Australian government of "taking members of the team hostage."
While those claims were being made in public, according to one club executive, money was being raised inside Iranian football to encourage the players to come home.
Alireza Babaei, chief executive of Chadormalou Ardakan, told a Football 360 live program that while the federation was working to bring the whole delegation back, its general secretary Hedayat Mombeini asked Chadormalou to pay 30 billion rials, about $15,000, for the women's national team. Chadormalou does not have a women's team.
According to Babaei, Mombeini also mentioned a payment of 50 billion rials, roughly $25,000, from the Gol Gohar club, and named Sepahan of Isfahan, a club that at that moment was weighing whether to continue fielding teams at all because of war damage to the steel industry.
In Iranian women's football, 50 billion rials from a single club is not a sum to be waved away. Afsaneh Chatrenoor, the national team forward who plays for Gol Gohar, was the premier league's leading scorer last season. She is also the player who sat across from Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei a few months ago and asked the head of the judiciary to help her find work for when her football career ends. At the top level of the Iranian women's game, the contracts of prominent players are still measured in a few billion rials.
What the tournament was always about
For the Islamic Republic's officials, the Women's Asian Cup in Australia was never only a football tournament.
Several members of the delegation applied for humanitarian protection from the Australian government during the war and after the killing of Ali Khamenei. Some later abandoned their asylum applications and returned to Iran under pressure from security forces on their families.
In those same days, Iranian officials were assembling their own version of events. They spoke of hostage-taking and of players being deceived, while simultaneously turning to threats, intimidation and financial inducements to get the asylum seekers back.
Now some of the same players who returned after that pressure are to sit in front of a camera, in a project belonging to a body outside football, and describe those days again.
It looks less like archiving history than like producing a state edition of it.
This time the Islamic Republic is not only constructing its own account of Australia. It wants the players inside the rewriting.
“This time you fight. Help from the people is on its way,” one Iran International audience told the US president, turning back on Trump a phrase he used during earlier anti-government protests.
Trump asked the question on Truth Social on Tuesday night while rejecting an ABC News report that he was seeking to bring Iran into negotiations.
“I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table... I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement,” Trump wrote.
“I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” Trump added.
Thousands of responses sent to Iran International pointed to a common argument: Iranians have repeatedly confronted the Islamic Republic, but many are reluctant to return to the streets without greater confidence that its forces can no longer suppress them and that outside powers will not change course.
‘People have been fighting for 47 years’
Several respondents pointed to successive waves of anti-government protests in Iran and the heavy costs borne by demonstrators.
“The people of Iran fought and rose up a thousand times beyond their capacity. Now it is time for other countries to help them,” one wrote.
“The people of Iran have been fighting for 47 years,” another told Trump.
Others pointed to protesters who took to the streets on January 8 and 9, asking when people who confronted government forces without weapons would receive meaningful assistance.
Some respondents said further negotiations between Washington and the Islamic Republic would undermine Iranians seeking political change.
“This government does not represent the people. Negotiating with the killers of the people is a mistake. Help so that the people themselves can finish the job,” one respondent wrote.
Fear of another crackdown
The prospect of another crackdown featured prominently in the messages, with people arguing that the capacity of security forces would have to be weakened before another uprising could succeed.
One described reducing the strength of forces used against demonstrators as the most important condition for renewed street protests.
“No matter how brave you are, if you know you will be killed by snipers, it is foolish to fight empty-handed,” another respondent wrote, referring to Trump’s previous calls for Iranians to protest.
On March 15, Trump said: “The protesters have no guns. And I know you’re a brave person, but I don’t think you’d be protesting. And so I think it’s very hard for them to protest. I fully understand it.”
Another person said ordinary people could not be treated as “cannon fodder,” adding that an uprising without a plan would be a mistake.
Several respondents said people would return to the streets when they believed the authorities’ ability to suppress demonstrations had been sufficiently weakened. Others pointed to disabling checkpoints and disrupting security structures as steps that could change the balance.
“Mr. Trump, continue the naval blockade and add a land blockade. Give [Benjamin] Netanyahu a free hand to destroy the system of repression, and then the people of Iran are ready to overthrow the Islamic Republic,” another one wrote.
Some also called for increased pressure on the Islamic Republic and clearer international backing for exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi during a potential transition.
Trump’s ‘help is on its way’ message returns
A separate strand of responses focused on mistrust of Washington and concern that Trump could encourage another uprising only to resume negotiations with the Islamic Republic.
“We are afraid that we will come out and you will negotiate with the mullahs’ regime again,” read a message.
“The people of Iran will rise when you do not negotiate with this murderous regime,” another wrote.
Trump had urged Iranians to continue protesting during demonstrations in January and told them that “help is on its way,” a message several respondents invoked in answering his latest question.
“When you said help was on its way, people came into the streets, but you sat down and made a deal with the government.”
The respondent added that if Iranians returned to the streets, they would do so “to fight and regain their own freedom,” rather than to advance US strategy.
