Iran launched more attacks on Washington’s Gulf allies on Saturday after the United States launched a seventh night of attacks on Iranian military bases including logistics facilities, escalating the war a week after a ceasefire collapsed.
Kuwait has been under sustained attack, with desalination plants attacked and operations at Kuwait International Airport suspended due to repeated missile and drone threats.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said they attacked the U.S. military support center at Camp Arifjan and destroyed radar facilities at Kuwait’s Ali Salem Air Base.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also targeted a location at Sheikh Issa Air Base in Bahrain where US fighter jets gather and an intelligence data center are located, state media reported.
Iran’s Guards said they also destroyed at least two U.S. fighter jets and three other aircraft in a missile and drone attack on a U.S. base in Azraq, Jordan, early Saturday, state television reported.
Reuters could not verify the reports.
Oil prices hit highest in more than a month
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned U.S. allies in the region in a statement, saying “With no international agency to stop the barbaric acts of the U.S. military, we have no choice but the command of the Quran: ‘Whoever attacks you, attack them in the same way.'”
Both sides targeted shipping traffic on Friday, with the United States saying it was imposing a naval blockade and Iran saying it was targeting ships violating navigation rules in the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway that supplies a fifth of the world’s oil.
Oil prices rose more than 4% on Friday to their highest levels in more than a month, putting political pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump as his Republican Party tries to retain power in November’s congressional elections.
Iran and Kuwait desalination facilities come under attack
Washington and Tehran have been testing the limits of escalation since the ceasefire collapsed last week, raising the possibility of an all-out war.
Despite concerns about potential war crimes, civilian infrastructure is increasingly under attack.
Several missiles hit power facilities and desalination pumps in the southern city of Jask on Saturday, Iranian media quoted local officials as saying. According to Tasnim News Agency, some 10,000 people in 20 villages are without water.
A power generation and desalination plant in Kuwait was hit in an Iranian attack, Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said in a statement. This is the second attack on Kuwait’s desalination plant in two days.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said earlier it ended a seventh day of strikes that hit Iran’s surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage and maritime capabilities.
Guterres expresses concern about attacks on infrastructure
A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday he was concerned about the escalation of the conflict, particularly “attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region.”
Iranian media reported an attack early Saturday in the Hormuzgan province in the Strait of Hormuz. State television said three people were killed, eight were injured and two bridges and a road tunnel were damaged.
A day earlier, Iranian state media said U.S. strikes had hit at least five bridges in the south. Seven people were reportedly killed in a bridge attack in the southern port of Bandar Kamil, where a train station was also attacked. An attack was reported on an airport in eastern Shahr, Iran.
Trump has threatened to launch widespread air strikes against Iran’s infrastructure and refused to rule out ground attacks on Iran’s coast or islands. U.S. officials said the attack on southern Iran was partly an effort to give Trump a choice.
Such a move could trigger Iran to attack critical infrastructure in vulnerable Gulf states or allow its Yemeni allies to further disrupt global energy supplies by attacking Red Sea shipping.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Stephen Coates and Gareth Jones; Editing by Sam Holmes and Alison Williams)
