Iran attacks Bahrain, Kuwait following US strikes, threatens to end talks to end war

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched drone and missile attacks Sunday targeting Bahrain and Kuwait in response to US airstrikes that hit the Islamic Republic, and threatened a “complete halt” could come to negotiations to end the war if Washington continues its attacks.

The attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait came as a multinational maritime body overseen by the US Navy said Saturday that it would expand a route near Oman in the Strait of Hormuz to allow for both inbound and outbound traffic — setting up a new flashpoint with Tehran.

An interim deal between the US and Iran to end the war called for the Strait, which once saw a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas pass through it, to see transits resume. However, Iran has twice attacked vessels going through the Oman route, backed by a United Nations agency, as Tehran insists that it must control passage through the crucial waterway despite American and Gulf Arab opposition.

Early Sunday, the US military's Central Command said it struck Iranian military “surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defence sites, drone storage facilities and minelayer capabilities” following an attack on a ship at sea early Saturday morning. That ship, the Panamanian-flagged tanker Kiku, carried crude oil for the state-run energy company of Qatar, a key negotiator between Iran and the US

In a social media post, Trump said the US had “struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!” He warned of a point where the US may no longer be able to be reasonable, “and will be forced to militarily complete the job.”

“If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The incident follows a similar back-and-forth that occurred just days prior, when an Iranian drone struck a merchant vessel off the coast of Oman on Thursday, and the US military retaliated with strikes.