Retaliatory strikes have spread to five countries, and President Trump says an agreement with Iran "isn't worth the paper it's written on," as the spring ceasefire framework shows no sign of holding.
Iran carried out retaliatory missile and drone strikes on US-linked and regional targets across Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, a geographic widening from the three-country pattern reported earlier in the week, following further US strikes on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets. Iran's government says a US strike killed four to five people, including children, at a wedding celebration in Kuhestak, in Sirik county, and the country's Red Crescent has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court calling the strike a war crime.
CENTCOM spokesman Tim Hawkins responded only that "the U.S. military never attacks or targets civilians," a statement that neither confirms nor denies a strike occurred at that location and doesn't address the casualty figures Iran has reported. Those figures are themselves inconsistent even among Iranian officials, ranging from four killed to a separate citation of five killed and 68 wounded.
President Trump, in on-the-record remarks, called the US strike a "very heavy attack," said the US is ready to "do another one anytime we want," dismissed Iran's retaliation as "a little love tap," and said "an agreement with them isn't worth the paper it's written on," language that closes the door on near-term diplomacy more explicitly than anything said publicly since the conflict began.
The conflict is already reaching markets well beyond the strike zones. Refining capacity has been knocked offline in Bahrain and Qatar, compounding damage to Russian refining from unrelated drone strikes, and Bermuda-based specialty insurer International General Insurance Holdings disclosed that catastrophe losses added 19 points to its loss ratio in the first half of the year, with underwriting income in its war-risk and political-violence book falling to $25.2 million from $50.6 million a year earlier, one of the clearest signs yet of the conflict showing up directly on a corporate balance sheet.