US Vice President JD Vance said that the United States is investigating Iranian claims that an air strike hit a wedding party, but that he is “skeptical” of reports coming out of Tehran.
“We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,” Vance told reporters at the White House on September 3. “I know that we’re investigating, 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.”
“If we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran, when our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them,” he added.
Tehran said the strike hit a home during a wedding ceremony in the village of Kuhestak in Sirik County in southern Iran, killing four people and injuring 70. Iranian media said a fifth person — a 22-year-old woman — later died in a hospital.
Iranian mourners gathered on September 3 outside the village, with some carrying caskets for a funeral ceremony.
The US military has not addressed the strike directly.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Tim Hawkins said it was aware of the reports, adding that “the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Iran has accused the United States of several deadly attacks on civilians during the war.
Tehran said the deadliest incident was an air strike on a girls’ elementary school in the southern city of Minab, which it said killed as many as 165 schoolgirls and teachers. UN experts have expressed “deep concern” about the incident.
The Pentagon announced an investigation but has yet to report its findings.
Separately, when Vance was asked by reporters during his White House remarks how long he thought the war would last, he did not answer directly.
“I wouldn’t call it a war,” he said. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”
“I recognize there have been places where this has flared up,” he added, but said that major combat operations only lasted for six weeks after the US-Israeli war with Iran started on February 28 and that the US had “made it harder for them to rebuild that nuclear program.”
Vance also said that the US is not planning to conduct talks with Tehran unless Iran ceases its attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
“They’ve got to stop. It’s that simple,” he said.
