An attack in Kuwait damaged a power and water desalination plant on Friday amid a fresh wave of strikes on key infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.
Fatima Hayat, a spokeswoman for the Kuwaiti ministry of electricity, water and renewable energy, said that Iran was responsible for the attack. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denied carrying it out, blaming it instead on Israel.
It came a day after the United States bombed a bridge in Iran and President Trump threatened strikes on Iranian power plants.
A drone also struck Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery, setting several units ablaze, according to the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. There were no reports of injuries, and the company did not say where the drone came from.
In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the authorities said that falling debris from an air defense interception had started a fire at the Habshan gas facility. Earlier, the U.A.E.’s defense ministry said its forces were responding to drones and missiles launched from Iran.
When the United States and Israeli began bombing Iran on Feb. 28, Iranian forces quickly retaliated by striking energy infrastructure in Persian Gulf countries that are allied with the United States — like Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility. The U.S.-Israeli campaign of airstrikes has also targeted energy sites in Iran, including fuel depots and gas fields.
Both sides in the conflict have targeted a widening array of sites — like steel plants — as the war drags into its second month. Attacks on desalination plants, which are vital in the region’s harsh desert climates, are a particular source of concern.
Mr. Trump has threatened to destroy power plants and other infrastructure in Iran if its leaders do not agree to a peace deal and end their military’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil exports.
“Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media late Thursday. “Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST!”
Intentionally targeting Iran’s energy infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law, experts say.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump praised a U.S. airstrike on a highway bridge near Tehran, Iran’s capital, that partially destroyed it. The attack killed eight people and injured nearly 100 others, Ghodratollah Seif, the deputy governor of Alborz Province, told Iranian state media.
A U.S. military official said that American forces had struck the bridge because it was a planned military supply route for Iran’s missile and drone forces. Mr. Seif told state media that there was no military activity on the bridge and that it was not in use yet. The bridge is part of a project to connect Tehran to the Caspian Sea.
On Friday, the command headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps vowed in a statement carried by Iranian state media that if Mr. Trump carried out his “repeated threats to destroy Iran’s bridges, power plants and electricity and energy infrastructure,” Iran would retaliate against U.S. and Israeli “assets” in the region and those belonging to “host and allied countries.” It said the targets would include those “in the fields of fuel, energy, economic centers and power plants.”
Leily Nikounazar, Dayana Iwaza, Adam Rasgon and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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