Iran, U.S. trade strikes as Gulf tensions escalate

Iran fired missiles and drones toward Kuwait and Bahrain, and the United States struck an Iranian facility on Qeshm Island in response, as clashes in the Gulf intensified and diplomacy between Washington and Tehran showed little visible progress.

U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that Iran launched several ballistic missiles toward regional neighbors, but that they failed to hit their intended targets. Two missiles fired at Kuwait fell apart or fell short en route, while three missiles aimed at Bahrain were intercepted by U.S. and Bahraini air defense forces, CENTCOM said. The command also said it downed multiple Iranian drones targeting American forces in Kuwait and shot down three attack drones launched toward civilian mariners in regional waters.

Kuwait later reported damage from a separate attack. According to Kuwait’s state news agency KUNA, the country’s international airport was hit by drones and missiles Wednesday morning, causing injuries, severe damage to several airport facilities, and flight suspensions and diversions. The attack struck the airport’s T1 building, KUNA reported, citing the General Civil Aviation Authority.

CENTCOM said it responded to the Iranian attacks with strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island, in the Strait of Hormuz. It said no U.S. personnel were injured.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had targeted the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain and another country, without naming Kuwait. The Guard said the attack came in response to the U.S. firing a missile into the engine room of an oil tanker trying to reach Iran despite a U.S. blockade.

“We had previously warned that in case of aggression, the response would be different and more severe, and we acted accordingly,” the Guard said.

CENTCOM rejected Iran’s claims that it had struck U.S. military installations. “FALSE,” the command wrote on X. “All Iranian attacks on American forces failed.”

The exchanges came amid conflicting accounts of whether talks between Washington and Tehran are continuing. Iran stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the U.S. and Israel, according to reports Tuesday from the semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies, which are believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guard. A regional official involved in the mediation told The Associated Press that Iran had not communicated Tuesday after saying a ceasefire needed to be enforced in Lebanon for negotiations to continue.

President Donald Trump disputed reports that talks had stopped. “The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago and today,” Trump wrote on social media. “Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ‘It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal.’”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, testifying at a congressional hearing, did not address the reported cutoff in communications but said there was reason for optimism on the nuclear dimension of negotiations, while warning there was no guarantee of reaching “a deal that’s acceptable.”

The Gulf clashes are unfolding alongside rising violence in Lebanon. Iran has said any truce in its conflict with the U.S. and Israel must also quiet the fighting there, while Washington and Israel maintain the Lebanon fighting is separate from the Iran war talks. The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed five people, including a child, and wounded 48.

Iran is also under growing economic pressure. Its Central Bank said consumer prices in May were 77.2% higher than a year earlier, up 8.5 percentage points from April. Inflation for daily and general needs, including medicine, taxi fares, tobacco and communication fees, rose 113.8% year over year. The Bamdad Institute of Economic Studies described the figures as “an unprecedented rate since World War II.”

The rial, which traded at 32,000 to the dollar in 2015, now trades at more than 1.7 million to the dollar. “We will definitely have higher prices,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned in May. “We are fighting, and we must accept this hardship.”