Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched missile and drone strikes targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait on Wednesday, escalating a cycle of retaliation that has brought the fragile interim peace agreement between Washington and Tehran to its most dangerous point since it was signed, as the funeral of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continued and mourners across the region chanted vows of vengeance.
The Iranian strikes came hours after the United States launched a fresh wave of military attacks on Iranian targets and revoked a key license allowing Tehran to sell oil internationally, itself a response to Iranian attacks on three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz the previous day.
What We Know So Far
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed it carried out a joint missile and drone operation targeting what it described as key U.S. military sites, including Bandar Salman and Bahrain’s Fifth Naval District, and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. The IRGC also said it shot down a U.S. MQ-9 drone it claimed was attempting to interfere in the operation, Reuters confirmed.
Air raid sirens sounded in both Bahrain and Kuwait. The Kuwaiti army confirmed its air defenses were actively confronting what it described as hostile missile and drone attacks. The U.S. military did not immediately comment on the Iranian strikes.
The U.S. Central Command said more than 60 small IRGC boats were among the targets struck during its earlier wave of strikes against Iran, which also hit Iranian air defense systems, coastal surveillance systems, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, and drone launch sites, a U.S. official told Reuters.
Iranian media reported explosions at Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub from which 90 percent of its crude oil is shipped, as well as on Qeshm Island and in the southern port cities of Sirik and Bandar Abbas. CENTCOM did not mention Kharg Island in its public statements.
No civilian deaths in Iran were reported, though several people were injured by shrapnel from what Iranian state television described as an enemy projectile striking a commercial pier in Sirik. Strikes also reportedly hit fishing piers in Sirik and Bandar Abbas.
Bahrain sounded its alert sirens a second and then a third time later Wednesday morning, the Associated Press confirmed.
What Authorities Are Saying
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, speaking to reporters before the NATO leaders summit in Ankara where Trump was present, offered firm backing for the American strikes. “When you have a ceasefire and Iran is basically violating the ceasefire, I think it is totally crucial that the U.S. forcefully react,” Rutte said. “The new attacks by the U.S. on Iran were absolutely necessary.”
CENTCOM framed its operations in clear terms. “The unwarranted aggression by Iranian forces is a clear and dangerous violation of the ceasefire and undermines freedom of navigation,” the command said.
Iran’s top joint military command, the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, condemned the U.S. strikes as a “blatant act of aggression” and threatened a “crushing response,” warning that Tehran would not permit American interference in what it characterized as its management of the strait.
Iranian parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf took the broadest view of Iranian grievances, citing the U.S. military strikes, the oil license revocation, what he called violations of Iranian shipping route adjustments in the strait, and ongoing Israeli attacks against Lebanon as a combined package of American and Israeli bad faith. “The era of bullying and extortion is over,” Qalibaf wrote on X. “We don’t fold.”
Iran’s foreign ministry described the U.S. strikes as an openly ceasefire-violating act targeting civilian infrastructure alongside military sites. It said it would take “any measure it deemed necessary to safeguard its interests and national security.”
Senior UAE diplomat Anwar Gargash described Iran’s strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait as proof that Tehran remained unable to commit to the requirements of de-escalation. “The Gulf Arab states cannot remain a target for Iran’s wavering between the logic of escalation and the path of rationality, stability and peace,” he wrote.
Qatar, which has been a key mediator alongside Pakistan in the talks, held Iran “fully legally responsible” for the attack on its LNG tanker the Al Rekayyat, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari calling it an “unacceptable attack” on international navigation and global energy security.
A U.S. official told the Associated Press that negotiators on both sides had continued working in good faith toward a final agreement even as the military exchanges unfolded, suggesting neither country had formally abandoned the diplomatic track as of Wednesday.
Why This Matters
Wednesday’s events represent the most serious test of the interim U.S.-Iran agreement since it was signed and reveal structural vulnerabilities in the ceasefire framework that neither side has been able or willing to resolve.
The fundamental problem remains the Strait of Hormuz. Iran insists on controlling vessel routes through the waterway, demanding registration with Tehran for ships heading north and asserting the right to eventually charge fees for transit.
The United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the broader Gulf Arab coalition maintain the strait is an international waterway governed by longstanding maritime law that no single nation can unilaterally restrict or monetize.
The interim agreement papered over rather than resolved that disagreement, and Iran’s attacks on ships using the Oman-adjacent route, which U.S. and multinational maritime authorities had designated as open for all traffic, represent a direct assertion of the position Tehran never actually conceded in negotiations.
The decision to strike Bahrain and Kuwait is strategically calculated in ways that go beyond immediate military exchange. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Kuwait hosts multiple American military installations.
By striking directly at the physical infrastructure of American military presence in the Gulf, Iran is demonstrating that it can impose costs on the United States beyond the strait itself and beyond Iran’s own borders. That demonstration serves Tehran’s negotiating position even as it escalates the immediate military risk.
The revocation of Iran’s oil sales license removes one of the most tangible economic benefits Tehran had secured through the interim agreement. Iranian oil exports had been sanctioned since the 1979 revolution, and the temporary authorization had given Iran access to dollar-denominated international oil markets for the first time in decades. Losing that access before the 60-day negotiating window has elapsed is a significant material blow, one that Iran’s foreign ministry has characterized as a fundamental breach of the framework agreement.
The timing relative to Khamenei’s funeral complicates matters further. Iranian political culture is deeply attentive to the symbolism of mourning and honor. Launching military strikes on Iranian territory during the days of the supreme leader’s funeral ceremonies, while hundreds of thousands of mourners fill the streets of Qom, Najaf, and Karbala, produces a domestic political dynamic inside Iran that makes compromise appear to its domestic audience as submission to aggression against the nation at its most vulnerable moment.
Khamenei’s son, Iran’s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, had not appeared publicly at any point during the funeral ceremonies and was believed to be in hiding following reports that he had been wounded in the airstrike that killed his father.
His continued absence from the public stage leaves open the question of who is directing Iran’s strategic decision-making and whether the current escalation reflects a considered policy or the actions of military commanders operating with significant autonomy.
What Happens Next
Khamenei’s funeral was expected to culminate Thursday with burial at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, his birthplace. U.S. officials had indicated that serious negotiations toward a final agreement would not resume until after the burial, setting Thursday as the earliest possible moment for diplomatic re-engagement.
Whether that diplomatic re-engagement can occur given Wednesday’s strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait, the oil license revocation, and the hardened public language from both sides is deeply uncertain. Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi had warned that negotiations on the final deal “would not commence if threats continue,” a condition that Wednesday’s events have made considerably harder to meet.
Trump remained in Turkey for the NATO summit, where the alliance’s formal condemnation of Iranian ceasefire violations and NATO’s backing of the U.S. military response will frame the political environment in which any diplomatic outreach must now take place.
For the Gulf Arab states, the strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait represent a direct security threat that goes beyond their roles as hosts of American bases. The UAE’s Gargash articulated a regional frustration that has been building across the Gulf since the war began: that Iran’s pattern of using its neighbors as the venue for its confrontation with the United States is unsustainable and that the regional states themselves require clearer security guarantees.
The question of whether both Washington and Tehran remain at the negotiating table despite the current escalation is the central variable on which everything else depends. Both sides’ officials suggested Wednesday that the diplomatic channel had not been formally closed. But the distance between that formal position and the conditions that would allow meaningful talks to resume has widened considerably with each strike and counter-strike that has marked this day.
AP/Reuters
