Kuwait on Tuesday accused Iran of sending several members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to infiltrate a strategically important Kuwaiti island.
On May 1, a group of armed members of the revolutionary guards arrived at Bubiyan Island in the Persian Gulf aboard a rented fishing boat and exchanged fire with Kuwaiti soldiers, injuring one of them, Kuwait’s interior ministry said in a statement. It said four of the revolutionary guards were arrested while two others fled.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the incident.
The ministry identified all six of the attackers and said they included Iranian navy and army lieutenants. Kuwaiti authorities, much like their counterparts in neighboring Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, have cracked down on individuals and groups they say have links with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Boubyan is a largely uninhabited island off the Kuwaiti mainland, where the government is building the strategic Mubarak al-Kabeer Port with China’s help as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The episode underscored how the war the United States and Israel have waged against Iran has increasingly drawn the Gulf Arab states into the fighting, despite their efforts to avoid direct military involvement.
On Sunday, several Gulf countries reported attacks in spite of a month-old cease-fire. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said they had detected several drones in their airspace, while Qatar said a cargo vessel traveling from Abu Dhabi was attacked by a drone in its waters.
Since the war began, the Gulf countries that have American military bases have faced thousands of Iranian missile and drone attacks, damaging civilian infrastructure and killing at least 20 civilians.
The Emirates, seeking to shield itself from the fallout of the war, has deepened its security coordination with Israel as Iranian attacks increasingly target Emirati territory. Iran, in turn, has accused the U.A.E. of firing on it.
On Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said Israel had sent its Iron Dome air defense batteries and personnel to the Emirates to help defend it, as it had borne the brunt of Iranian missile and drone attacks during the war.
His comments, made during a conference in Tel Aviv, appear to be the first official confirmation of the deployment, which was reported last week. It is the first time the system has been known to have been deployed in an Arab country.
The deployment highlighted the growing military and security ties between the Emirates and Israel since the 2020 Abraham Accords, which established formal relations between the two countries.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
Ismaeel Naar is an international reporter for The Times, covering the Gulf states. He is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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