Iran Calls US Wedding Strike a War Crime

Defense analysts who examined fragments recovered in Kuhestak say the weapon may be a variant of the AGM-84K SLAM-ER, an air-launched cruise missile Boeing markets as having "surgical strike capability."

Kuhestak sits near the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway at the center of the fighting and a transit route for a large share of the world's oil.

Iranian authorities say more than 3,500 Iranians have been killed since the war began.

The strike also lands in the middle of a live fight in Washington over how the Pentagon tracks civilian harm. A Pentagon inspector general report in May found the department had made progress implementing its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, but that officials had stopped funding its data platform, stopped holding steering committee meetings and reassigned many of the staff. Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of war for policy, "partially agreed" with the findings and did not agree that a compliance plan was needed, according to the report. War Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly attacked what he calls "stupid rules of engagement," telling senior military leaders last year the Pentagon would deliver "no more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality."

In August, the Pentagon's annual Section 1057 civilian-harm report to Congress detailed three incidents in 2025 during Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis in Yemen, in which 153 civilians were killed and 243 injured. The deadliest, at Ras Isa Port on April 17, 2025, killed 80 civilians.