Kuwait's army announced on Thursday morning that it was actively intercepting a wave of missiles and drones fired from Iran — the most dramatic sign yet that a regional war is no longer a risk but a reality. The strikes hit US bases in Kuwait, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region almost simultaneously, marking the broadest Iranian military operation in the country's modern history. Tehran said the attacks were a direct response to extensive US bombardment of sites across Iran earlier this week. Iranian state media broadcast footage that it claimed showed drones lifting off toward targets in Bahrain and Kuwait.

The scale and coordination of the strikes suggest months of planning, not an impulsive retaliation, and they have put every US ally in the Gulf on an immediate war footing. Washington has not yet issued a formal statement on casualties or damage at the targeted bases, but the attacks have already reshaped the diplomatic map overnight. President Donald Trump, whose administration ordered the original bombardment of Iran, suggested renaming the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow chokepoint through which roughly 20 percent of the world's oil passes — as "Trump Strait." The proposal was widely mocked by regional governments and drew sharp criticism from international legal scholars, who noted that renaming an internationally recognised waterway requires no single country's approval.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli forces inside the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and vowed to keep troops deployed there, defying mediators who had pushed a US-backed ceasefire plan that required a military withdrawal.