Iran strikes five Gulf states in response to US bombing
Iran attacked five Gulf Cooperation Council states on Sunday — Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan — hours after the United States carried out its third round of strikes on Iranian territory this week . US Central Command said it had hit roughly 140 Iranian military targets — missile and drone sites, naval assets, ammunition depots and coastal surveillance — bringing the three-night total above 300, in what it framed as an effort to degrade Iran’s ability to attack civilian shipping.
Tehran’s retaliation reached facilities tied to the US military presence in the region: the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar and the Prince Hassan airbase in Jordan were hit with ballistic missiles, while Iran targeted air-defense and radar sites in Kuwait and Bahrain and logistics and refueling infrastructure at Oman’s Port Duqm. Qatar reported three people wounded by shrapnel and condemned the strikes as a “dangerous escalation”; Oman, which had hosted Iran’s foreign minister for talks only hours earlier, also condemned the attack.
By striking the Gulf Arab states directly, Iran has widened a conflict that until now was largely a bilateral exchange with Washington, putting the governments that host US bases in the position of absorbing the response to American strikes. Tehran separately declared the Strait of Hormuz closed “until the end of US interference.” The attacks on GCC capitals sharpen the pressure on those states to choose between their security ties to Washington and the risk of becoming battlefields.