Iran intensified its retaliatory strikes against American allies in the Persian Gulf and Israel on Sunday, attacking sites in at least nine countries since the start of the joint U.S.-Israeli attack.
Within 36 hours, the regime had hit every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of Arab states close to the U.S., including at multiple international airports and at least three active ports, crippling international travel and disrupting oil shipments. The strikes also tore through residential towers, luxury hotels and roads.
Although Iran has insisted its retaliatory strikes are aimed at U.S. military facilities in the region, the attacks appear to have targeted civilian and economic infrastructure in the gulf, alongside military installations, according to videos verified by The Washington Post and state and local media reports. The total number of casualties across the Arab cities was not immediately clear, but the strikes have led to the deaths of at least three U.S. service members.
In Iran, an extensive communications blackout has meant there is a less-clear picture of deaths and damage from U.S. and Israeli strikes, but the government has reported 201 deaths. Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Saturday that a strike killed more than 100 children at a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran.
Flights across the region came to a standstill Sunday after Iranian munitions struck at least four airports, including one of the world’s busiest, in Dubai. Bahrain International Airport sustained minimal damage from a drone attack Sunday. Airports in both Kuwait and the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Irbil, were also hit.
Shipping infrastructure appears to have been particularly hard-hit. In Jebel Ali Port, near Dubai, video showed an explosion producing a giant fireball rising dozens of feet in the air. Satellite imagery shows a trail of smoke fanning across the docks. The port has temporarily suspended operations.
Iranian munitions also hit Zayed Port in Abu Dhabi, where the French navy has a permanent base. Two drones struck a commercial port in Duqm, a port town along Oman’s southeast coast, according to the country’s state news agency. U.S. military helicopters have been seen at an airstrip in Duqm multiple times in recent weeks.
“Any disruption to Gulf port operations or traffic through the Strait of Hormuz immediately creates outsized ripple effects across the global economy,” said Bob Skea, CEO of the ship tracking company Pole Star Global, referring to the narrow shipping route that much of the gulf’s crude sails through. “The challenge becomes both economic and operational — rerouting vessels, managing crew safety and reassessing risk in real time.”
Iran’s targeting did not spare the region’s major civilian population centers. Large plumes of smoke towered over multiple cities off the Persian Gulf on Sunday morning, after Iranian retaliation strikes hit multiple locations from the Bahraini capital of Manama to Dubai. Flames engulfed the lower floors of the Fairmont Palm, a luxury hotel in Dubai, Saturday night local time. Towers of smoke dwarfed the palm-tree-lined sky.
But the worst civilian casualty toll of Iran’s retaliatory strikes came in Israel on Sunday, when an Iranian strike hit a bomb shelter in the residential area of Beit Shemesh, approximately 18 miles west of Jerusalem. At least nine people were killed in the strike, according to Israel’s emergency services, who were appealing for information as to how many people may be buried beneath the rubble.
The mayor of Beit Shemesh, Shmuel Greenberg, told Israeli media that a synagogue was destroyed and that an investigation was ongoing due to a “problem” with the bomb shelter underneath it. According to Avshalom Peled, a spokesperson for the Israeli police force, the shelter sustained a direct hit.
A video of the aftermath, verified by Storyful, showed extensive damage to several buildings, the husks of burned-out cars, and some structures that appear to have collapsed altogether.
Sunday’s fatal strike in Beit Shemesh was the second for Israel, which saw a strike late Saturday on central Tel Aviv that left one woman dead and 27 others injured, Israel’s emergency services said.
In Manama, the multistory towers behind the Crown Plaza Hotel disappeared into a cloud of dense gray smoke after the hotel was hit Sunday morning, video shows. When the smoke cleared, the once-grand entrance to the luxury property was charred. The hotel’s windows were shattered and the lettering on the sign nearly erased, video shows. Debris lay scattered across the driveway as emergency workers moved toward the entrance.
Residential towers in Bahrain were also hit. A Shahed-style drone flew directly into a high-rise building in the city Saturday night, exploding fiery debris onto the balcony below, video shows. The explosion instantly cloaked the building in smoke and set at least three floors ablaze. Flames climbed up the side of a second residential high-rise in the city that was separately struck by at least one munition.
A British tourist vacationing at a Dubai beach club posted a video of munitions being intercepted on Saturday.
“That is f—— mental,” the tourist, Will Bailey, said in the video. “I have no words.”
Joyce Sohyun Lee in Washington and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
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