Kuwait briefly shut its main airport on Wednesday after Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal, killed one person and wounded dozens.
It was the latest in back-and-forth attacks by Iran and the US which were testing a fragile ceasefire.
The strike reinforced the risks to residents and travellers in Gulf countries which 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 US-Israeli war with Iran. They are increasingly strained by Israel’s broadening war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
A regional official said Tehran wanted a separate ceasefire in Lebanon enforced before returning to talks. US President Donald Trump said negotiations continue.
Iran maintains its hold on the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial waterway for the world’s oil and natural gas and related products like fertiliser — and the US continues its blockade of Iranian ports. Global fuel prices remain high, and the effects of the conflict are felt well beyond the region.
In Washington, House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson said he, Mr Trump, vice president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio met for three hours at the White House on Monday as the president worked on “that final piece” of getting commerce flowing.
Mr Rubio, meanwhile, faced grilling in Congress over the war and its economic fallout.
A spokesperson for Kuwait’s Defence Ministry, Brigadier Genweral Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi, said “a number of hostile drones” targeted a passenger building at Kuwait International Airport. It had only opened on Monday after a months-long closure because of the war, which began on February 28 with US 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 Defence Ministry said it destroyed more than 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.
The US 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 US and Bahraini forces intercepted missiles aimed at the Gulf kingdom, home to the US Navy’s 5th fleet. Bahrain’s Defence 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 US military facilities in another country, but did not name Kuwait.
The US and Iran said they were retaliating for earlier attacks or attempted ones.
The US 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 US 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.
