Kuwait said that Iranian forces had launched a wave of drone attacks at its shores early Saturday, as the Middle East braced for a possible escalation in fighting after President Trump said he was preparing to hit Iran “very hard.”
Kuwait’s military said that it had detected and destroyed multiple drones in its airspace since dawn, and that Iran had targeted critical infrastructure in the country’s north. A military spokesman said that falling shrapnel had damaged vehicles on the Kuwaiti island of Bubiyan, near the Iraqi border, but no casualties were reported.
Kuwait hosts one of Washington’s largest military deployments in the Middle East, and Bubiyan Island lies close to several critical U.S. military facilities. There was no immediate comment on the attacks from Iran or U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the region.
While there were no U.S. strikes on Iran reported overnight, there was little indication that the two sides were moving back toward diplomacy. The conflict has lurched between military confrontation and negotiations in recent months, and renewed exchanges of fire this week punctured a brief lull in fighting.
Speaking on Friday from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, Mr. Trump said the United States was weighing additional military action against Iran after days of escalating attacks across the region. “We’ll be hitting them very hard, and you know at some point they’re going to say, ‘We just can’t take it anymore,’” Mr. Trump said. “We just want to win,” he added.
The potential risk of escalation prompted additional security warnings from the State Department. On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Jordan urged Americans to consider departing the region, or to be prepared to leave if the conflict intensified.
Iran, meanwhile, has shown no sign of backing down. On Saturday, Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, the commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters in Iran, which coordinates joint operations across the country’s armed forces, accused Washington of “increasingly pursuing a path of widespread warmongering.”
The fighting in recent weeks has shattered a cease-fire deal reached in June. The agreement was intended to halt attacks between the two countries, paving the way for further negotiations to end the war, but left unresolved the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has sought greater authority over commercial marine traffic through the strait, a critical waterway for oil and gas shipping in the Persian Gulf, while the United States has insisted on unrestricted navigation.
Iran has fired repeatedly on commercial ships in the strait, prompting U.S. strikes and further exchanges of fire.
On Saturday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, an organization led by the British Royal Navy that monitors threats to commercial shipping, said a tanker had reported an explosion close to the vessel, which was off the coast of Oman. No damage was reported, the organization said.
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