In a post on his X account on Wednesday, Qalibaf cited the US attacks on a school in Iran’s Minab, a sports hall in Lamerd and a wedding ceremony in Kuhestak, saying the pattern of civilian casualties reveals the nature of the US actions.
“Minab school: children massacred. Lamerd sports hall: kids slaughtered. Kouhestak wedding: children killed with families,” he said.
“If a power acts like Satan, picks targets like Satan, and kills like Satan, it’s Satan,” Qalibaf said of the US.
“Shields a junior Satan that does the same? It’s THE Great Satan,” he added.
The comments came after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei condemned a US strike on a residential home in Kuhestak, Sirik, where families had gathered for a wedding. Baqaei said more than 50 people were killed or wounded, describing the attack as part of a broader pattern of US actions against Iranian civilians and warning that silence over such attacks could amount to their normalization.
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian Army subsequently announced a series of missile and drone strikes on US bases in Jordan, Iraq’s Erbil, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates in retaliation for the Sirik strike, in which nearly 70 civilians were hit and four people, including a child, were martyred.