Middle East war: Trump floats Hormuz name change as Iran vows revenge for civilian deaths

Fears are growing that the powder keg in the Middle East is primed to blow after a wedding party was bombed in Iran.

According to local state-run media, four people were killed in the attack and at least 68 people were injured as a US missile struck the wedding in the southern city of Sirik on Monday night , local time.

Footage posted to social media by Iran’s Foreign Affairs Minister Esmaeli Baqaei shows rubble strewn around a building with a large hole in the ceiling.

Baqaei said men, women and children are among those “martyred or wounded”.

“The US’ catalogue of atrocities against the nation of Iran is now complete: a residential home in Kuhestak, Sirik, was brutally attacked tonight while families were celebrating a wedding,” Baqaei said.

He added the US attack is one of many that has killed civilians in just over six months since the war began, referencing the airstrike on a girls’ school in Minab which killed 156 and injured 95 more on the first day of the conflict.

“More dangerous than the bomb itself is the normalisation of bombing; and more dangerous than silence is the conversion of silence into legitimacy,” Baqaei said.

Sirik was just one of a number of Iranian cities to be targeted during the Monday attacks before Iran retaliated with strikes on American targets in Middle Eastern countries.

The sudden escalation has raised major concerns about the conflict reigniting, having already caused knock-on effects across the global economy.

Those concerns have been compounded as Iran, the US and Israel have announced they’re prepared to resume a war which has already killed thousands.

Shortly after the US begun striking Iran on Monday, US President Donald Trump took to social media claiming the attacks were due to Iran trying to deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

“The strikes are large and powerful and in retaliation for the Iranians’ failed attempt at adding sea mines to the Strait, which currently has no mines,” Trump said, adding: “They have been completely removed or detonated.”

He also claimed Iran had shot eight missiles at a US military base in Jordan, all of which were “successfully knocked down”, before issuing a damning warning to Tehran.

Trump returned to social media the day after to claim the vital shipping route is “under USA control” and floated the idea of renaming it in his own honour.