Vance Says He’s ‘Extremely Skeptical’ of Reports That US Bombed Wedding in Iran Despite Overwhelming Evidence

September 3, 2026 Decker Culture, Current Events, Home Leave a comment

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Vance Says He’s ‘Extremely Skeptical’ of Reports That US Bombed Wedding in Iran Despite Overwhelming Evidence

by Dave DeCamp – antiwar.com

Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that he was “extremely skeptical” of Iranian media reports that the US bombed a wedding in Iran on Tuesday, despite overwhelming evidence from other sources that the US was responsible.

“I’ve been briefed to the extent that I know that we’re investigating. I’ve seen the same public media reports everywhere else,” Vance said at a press briefing when asked about reports of the strike.

“I will say that the Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what’s happened in the conflict thus far. So I’m extremely skeptical of this,” he added.

The New York Times has verified the footage and photos of the aftermath of the strike, which hit a home in the southern Iranian city of Kuhestak, and concluded that the bomb had been fired by US forces.

Trevor Ball, a munitions expert, examined the photos and identified the remnants of a glide bomb that is used by US Central Command and is not used by Iran’s military. He told the Times that a tail fin and distinctive casing matched the US’s Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW.

The home that was bombed belongs to Ali Mallahi, a fisherman and member of Iran’s Baluch ethnic minority, who was celebrating his daughter’s wedding at the time of the strike.

Iranian officials initially said four people were killed, but Iranian media reported on Thursday that a 22-year-old woman died of wounds sustained in the attack, bringing the death toll up to five. The other four victims killed in the strikes on Kuhestan have been identified as four-year-old Amir Ali Karimi, 16-year-old Mohammad Malahi, 43-year-old Kolsoum Malahi, and 43-year-old Zarkhatoun Taheri.

The Balochistan Human Rights Documentation Network, a foreign-based group that maintains contacts with the Baloch community in Iran and is very critical of the Iranian government, also confirmed that the wedding was bombed but told The Associated Press that the 16-year-old boy, Mohammad Malahi, was killed in a separate strike that hit a communications tower about 100 meters away from the wedding.

Vance said that the US is “investigating” the incident because when “our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them.” But six months after the US strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, southern Iran, which killed more than 100 schoolchildren, the Trump administration still hasn’t acknowledged responsibility, and US attacks have repeatedly killed civilians in Iran.

Vance also said during the press briefing that his advice to the Iranians is to “stop acting like crazy people and shooting at commercial shipping,” and he also claimed that the six-month-old conflict was “not a war.”