Iran has claimed drone and missile attacks on American military bases in the Gulf, in retaliation for the US strikes across southern Iran on Tuesday that we reported yesterday.

Iran’s military said it struck satellite communications systems, warehouses and fighter jet hangars at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait, and separately targeted US troops and radar stations at Al Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.

Meanwhile Iran’s health minister has put the toll from Tuesday’s American strikes at 18 civilians killed and more than 100 wounded.

The wedding in Sirik

Within that total is a single incident that has become the focus of the diplomatic response.

Iranian officials say a missile strike hit a wedding celebration in Sirik, in the south of the country. According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, shrapnel struck a home where the ceremony was taking place. Four people were killed — two women and two children — and more than 60 were wounded.

US Central Command’s spokesman said the military was looking into reports of the strike. He did not say whether a formal investigation had been opened.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman has accused the United States of a war crime. The Iranian Red Crescent has asked the International Criminal Court to act.

What the ICC can and cannot do here

A referral request is not a case, and the jurisdictional position is worth setting out plainly rather than leaving readers to assume either that proceedings are imminent or that the request is meaningless.

The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a state party, or by a national of one. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Neither is Iran. That combination is the obstacle: a strike by American forces on Iranian soil falls outside the court’s territorial and personal jurisdiction as it ordinarily operates.

Two routes exist around that. Iran could accept the court’s jurisdiction for these specific events under Article 12(3), without joining the treaty. Or the UN Security Council could refer the situation — which the United States would veto.

So the request is, for now, a legal and political act rather than the start of a prosecution. That does not make it empty. Referral requests create a documentary record, and they place a state’s own account of an incident on the international file at the time it happened rather than years later.

The rule that actually applies

Whether a strike that kills civilians is a war crime does not turn on the number of dead. It turns on whether the target was a military objective, and whether the expected civilian harm was excessive relative to the anticipated military advantage.

Both of those are questions about what was known and intended before the weapon was released. Neither can be answered from outside, which is why the standard practice is an investigation that examines targeting records, and why “we are looking into reports” is a materially weaker statement than “we have opened an investigation.”

Plain Sight News cannot verify the Iranian account of Sirik, and Iranian casualty figures in this conflict come from a government that is party to it. Equally, CENTCOM has not disputed that a strike occurred there. Both of those things are worth holding at once.

The countries being struck are not the belligerents

The retaliation went to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, which are not parties to this war.

They host American bases, which is the stated reason. But each strike on Gulf territory forces a government that has spent years balancing between Washington and Tehran to respond publicly, and narrows the space in which those governments can act as intermediaries. The UAE has already intercepted an Iranian drone over its waters earlier in this sequence.

Washington has meanwhile hardened its line on third parties. The Treasury Secretary’s stated message to other countries is to stay away from Iran entirely, and the Secretary of State has framed any support as funding terrorism and a nuclear programme. President Trump has said Iran’s response means a harder American strike is coming.

Where this sits

Six months into the war, the pattern is a strike, a proportionate-looking answer, and a statement that the next one will be larger. What has changed this week is that the exchanges are now producing civilian casualties inside Iran and on Gulf territory, and that both sides are building legal records rather than only military ones.

The indicator worth watching is whether CENTCOM converts “looking into reports” into a named investigation. That is the step that determines whether any account of Sirik other than Iran’s ever exists.

Sources

• BBC News and Associated Press reporting on the Sirik strike, 2–3 September 2026
• Iranian Red Crescent Society and Iranian health ministry statements
• US Central Command statements
• Democracy Now headlines, 3 September 2026
• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Articles 12 and 13