Iranian Drones Strike US Bases in Kuwait

Iran’s army said on Friday, July 31, that it had used loitering drones against US bases in Kuwait, chief among them Ahmad Al-Jaber Air Base. The war Washington is waging against Iran has once again moved onto the soil of a third Gulf state. For Serbia the distance is smaller than it looks: the Gulf carries the oil routes that set fuel prices on the European market, and every shift of the target list toward countries hosting American garrisons rewrites the risk calculation for the whole region.

The strike was carried out in the 27th phase of Operation Sa’eqeh, meaning Thunderbolt, according to the army statement. The listed targets at Ahmad Al-Jaber were:

• aircraft shelters
• satellite communication systems
• equipment warehouses

The stated trigger was the run of American strikes on Iranian territory, including one on a residential home on Qeshm Island. The army statement carried a message aimed at the home audience as much as at Washington.

Crimes, sanctions and threats will only make Iran more united and cohesive in its sacred defense.

The tone matches earlier phases of the same operation. The geography does not: phase 26 hit a US base in Bahrain, phase 27 went to Kuwait.

The IRGC named four more locations

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said separately that it had also gone after Ali Al Salem Air Base and three American camps in Kuwait:

• Camp Doha
• Camp Udairi
• Camp Arifjan

Ahead of the attack, the Guard said that with the help of God Almighty the aggressor would be punished that day. There is no independent confirmation of the scale of damage at those sites, with one exception inside Ali Al Salem.

What does the satellite imagery show?

The images were released by the Soar platform, whose analytical arm Soar Atlas reported blackening on a storage area used by US forces at Ali Al Salem, consistent with damage to the facility. It is so far the only visual trace of the attack originating outside Iranian official channels.

The site itself is censored on Google’s basemap, so any comparison with earlier ground conditions runs through commercial satellite archives. That narrows verification of damage in Kuwait to the handful of operators who photograph and publish that stretch of the Gulf at all.

Why Iran struck back

The American strike on Wednesday hit a residential house on Qeshm Island. Three members of one family were killed, the father, the mother and their two-year-old son, and the father worked as a taxi driver. Two other children were pulled alive from the rubble and taken to hospital. We covered that strike and the deaths in the family in “Washington resumes strikes on Iran, family killed on Qeshm.”

According to US Central Command, the same wave struck:

• Qeshm Island
• Kish Island
• Fars province
• Bushehr province
• Khuzestan province
• Hormozgan province

The US military said on Thursday it had completed a heavy wave of strikes on dozens of IRGC targets, among them military command centres, missile and drone facilities and coastal surveillance installations.

Kuwait counts its own losses

On Thursday morning an Iranian missile hit a building belonging to a Chinese firm in northern Kuwait. One worker was killed and the structure sustained heavy damage. Kuwait’s Defence Ministry confirmed the incident, and Major General Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi described the response in a statement.

Competent authorities immediately began taking the necessary measures and dealing with the situation upon the occurrence of the incident, in coordination with the relevant authorities.

Al-Otaibi added that Kuwait’s armed forces were carrying out measures to protect national sovereignty, security and stability. The statement neither labels the attack nor names who carried it out, which is the language of a state that hosts foreign bases on its territory and keeps working relations with its neighbours.

A night without strikes on Iran

Overnight into Friday, July 31, neither Iranian media nor the US military reported strikes on Iranian territory. It is the first such gap in this wave, and neither side has presented it as a decision.

Jordan shot down five missiles fired from Iran on Thursday morning, the second consecutive day, with no casualties. In Iraq, American and Saudi forces struck pro-Iranian groups, and the IRNA news agency reported that the bodies of five IRGC members had been returned to Iran.

Iran’s army numbers the phases of Operation Sa’eqeh itself, which announces the sequel in advance. After Bahrain and Kuwait, the next number in that series is the one thing that can be expected with any confidence.