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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait briefly shut its main airport Wednesday after Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal, killed one person,
and wounded dozens — the latest in back-and-forth attacks by Iran and the U.S. that test a fragile ceasefire. The strike reinforced the risks to residents and travelers in Gulf countries that had considered themselves relative havens before the war, now in its fourth month.
Talks have dragged on for weeks as mediators seek a more enduring truce in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. They are increasingly strained by Israel’s broadening war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.A regional official said Iran wanted a separate ceasefire in Lebanon enforced before returning to talks. U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations continue.
The fighting in Lebanon has also exposed a rift between Israel and the U.S., which is pushing its ally for restraint. In a measure of the friction, Trump acknowledged that he'd called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'crazy' during a phone call earlier this week. Nonetheless, both men say their rapport is solid.
Iran maintains its hold on the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial waterway for the world’s oil and natural gas and related products like fertilizer — and the U.S. continues its blockade of Iranian ports. Global fuel prices remain high, and the effects of the conflict are felt well beyond the region.
A spokesperson for Kuwait's Defense Ministry, Brig. Gen. Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi, said 'a number of hostile drones' targeted a passenger building at Kuwait International Airport. It had opened only Monday after a months-long closure because of the war, which began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
India’s embassy said the person killed was an Indian national. Authorities said 63 were wounded, including passengers and workers, and some suffered serious injuries.
Kuwait's Defense Ministry said it destroyed over a dozen missiles and a similar number of drones from Iran.
The airport partially reopened later, with Kuwait Airways flights resuming at a different terminal, according to civil aviation authorities. No other flights were operating.
The Foreign Ministry said Kuwait will 'neither accept nor tolerate' the attacks and was kicking out two Iranian diplomats. Such expulsions are an established means of communicating international ire.
The U.S. military said two Iranian missiles fell apart en route to Kuwait and that it 'downed multiple drones' targeting American forces in the country.
The military also said U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted missiles aimed at the Gulf kingdom, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet. Bahrain’s Defense Ministry said its military intercepted and destroyed three missiles and a number of drones fired by Iran.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard acknowledged that it targeted the headquarters of the 5th Fleet and U.S. military facilities in another country, but did not name Kuwait.
Both the U.S. and Iran said they were retaliating for earlier attacks or attempted ones.
The U.S. military also said it launched strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the U.S. strikes on the island, where it said a telecommunications tower was struck, and other previous strikes. It called them 'acts of aggression' that it said violated the ceasefire.
Writing on X, a senior Emirati diplomat, Anwar Gargash, called for 'a firm, unified, and cohesive Gulf position' against Iran following the attacks.
Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the Guard, on Tuesday reported that Iran’s negotiators have stopped communicating with ceasefire mediators as tensions flare in Lebanon.
A regional official involved in the mediation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, told The Associated Press that Iran had not communicated on Tuesday after saying a ceasefire needed to be enforced in Lebanon for negotiations to continue.
Trump called reports of a cessation in talks 'false and erroneous.'
Israeli forces have moved deeper into Lebanon than at any time in over a quarter-century, while Hezbollah has launched rocket and drone attacks. The declared ceasefire in Lebanon is officially in place and no side has formally withdrawn or declared it over even as attacks continue.
Iran insists that any larger potential truce must quell the fighting in Lebanon. Netanyahu wants to keep the issues separate and is under domestic pressure to strike Hezbollah as he prepares for elections this fall.
In a podcast interview released Wednesday, Trump confirmed a report that he had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'crazy' Monday in a phone call peppered with an expletive. Trump told The New York Post’s 'Pod Force One' that he was 'a little bit perturbed' that Israel’s fight with Hezbollah was holding back talks with Iran.
Still, Trump said his relationship with Netanyahu was good, and 'we’ve worked very well together.'
Netanyahu responded that he and Trump sometimes have 'tactical disagreements' but have 'common goals' and 'agree on the main things.'
'He respects me. I respect him. We always find a way to work out our differences,' the prime minister said in an interview on the American business-news channel CNBC.
