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Iran fired on U.S. allies in the Gulf early Wednesday following a night of American bombardment that Iranian state media says included a deadly strike on a wedding party.
The latest violence came after a monthlong lull in fighting. The six-month war has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and posed increasing political problems for U.S. President Donald Trump's Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections.
Fighting has escalated since the American military hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, saying Iran was planning to use them to lay mines. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan that were intercepted.
American military resources are stretched and political pressure in Washington is mounting, while Iran's economy has been battered by sanctions and an American naval blockade. Iran's currency hit another record low on Wednesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging 2.20 million rials for one U.S. dollar, a 10% hike from last week's record.
Neither side can continue indefinitely between full-scale war and a truce, said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank.
"At some point, one of the sides may see a need to escalate in order to break this cycle," he cautioned. "So that could bring the two sides to a point that they have been trying to avoid until now, which is a full-scale war."
The latest flare-up in violence came as the standoff seemed to be shifting slightly more in the U.S.'s favor, with the price of oil hitting about $80 a barrel last month and Iranian leaders talking about growing economic hardships, said Sascha Bruchmann, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Middle East office in Bahrain.
"The U.S. is trying to reinstall some kind of confidence into the global oil markets ... and the Iranians had to respond to that by reinserting insecurity and doubt," Bruchmann said.
Since the fighting resumed over the weekend, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, has climbed to around $95, up more than 30% from the start of the war.
One U.S. strike hit a home hosting a wedding in Kuhestak, a small coastal town overlooking the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian state media.
Four people were killed -- two women and two children, aged 4 and 16 -- and at least 68 were wounded, the state news agency IRNA and state TV said Wednesday. Just after the strike, Ahmad Nafisi, the province's deputy governor, told Iranian state television that five people were killed. There was no explanation for the change.
Several heavy explosions shook Kuhestak, with fireballs that lit up the night sky, according to security camera footage carried by the semiofficial Fars news agency.
Images from Iran's semiofficial Tasnim news agency showed several hospitalized children being treated for injuries at a hospital in the nearby town of Minab, where a U.S. missile strike on the opening day of the war hit a primary school, killing more than 100 children.
Footage from the Iranian Red Crescent showed rescue workers entering a damaged home in the wake of the strike. It showed a hole in the roof of one house in a neighborhood of densely packed homes.
A weapons expert told The Associated Press that images of fragments of ordnance that Iranian media said was used in the strike on Mallahi's home, indicated it was an "American air-delivered guided weapon."
U.S. Central Command declined to comment on the analyst's findings.