Middle East: US and Iran trade fire amid stalled talks

An Iranian attack on Kuwait’s international airport on Wednesday morning injured at least 63 people, the Gulf country’s Health Ministry has said.

One person was also reported to have died in the attack, which has been claimed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC said the attack was in retaliation for US attacks on an Iranian tanker and an island.

“In response to this aggression, the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, which hosts helicopters, as well as the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, were targeted with missiles and drones by the Guards’ forces,” the Guards said in a statement on their official Telegram channel cited by the AFP news agency.

Kuwait’s state news agency said that the attack caused severe damage to the airport’s Terminal 1, with flights by Kuwait Airways resuming later in the day from Terminal 4, according to the civil aviation authority.

Kuwait's Foreign Ministry said the country reserves the right to respond to Iran and that it will “neither accept nor tolerate” such attacks.

Before Wednesday’s attack, Kuwait had gone through a period of relative calm since a ceasefire in the Iran war was announced on April ​8.

Kuwait’s civil aviation authority says the country’s flagship airline has resumed flights after an Iranian attack on the Gulf country’s international airport in which one person was reported to have been killed.

“The General Authority of Civil Aviation announced on Wednesday the resumption of all Kuwait Airways flights only, from Kuwait International Airport,” it said in a statement.

The airline is currently operating from Terminal 4 of the international airport after evaluating damage â and ​taking safety measures, according to the aviation authority.

The state news agency had earlier said there had been “severe damage” to the airport’s Terminal 1 building in the early morning attack, in which several people were also injured.

The attack on the airport forced authorities to divert flights, the agency ​reported.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has revised its prediction for global economic growth downward owing to the war in the Middle East.

In its quarterly update, the group, which brings together 38 industrialized countries, put its growth forecast at 2.8% if Gulf exports of oil and gas return to the levels seen before the conflict in the third quarter.

But it said that if the war continued into 2027, global growth this year could fall to 2.1% and to 1.8% next year.

For Germany, the OECD is predicting growth of 0.7% this year, rising to 1.1% in 2027, with both predictions revised down from the March forecasts in view of rising energy costs.

“The conflict in the Middle East has become the dominant force shaping the global economic outlook,” it wrote in the introduction to its report.

Kuwait has suspended commercial flights after a drone attack struck its main airport.

Officials said multiple drones hit Kuwait International Airport, damaging the passenger terminal and injuring several people.

Defense Ministry spokesperson Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi said “a number of hostile drones” targeted the facility, causing severe structural damage and multiple casualties.

Kuwait, a US ally, has been hit by repeated Iranian attacks since the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February.

High-stakes talks between Israel and Lebanon are set to resume Wednesday at the US State Department.

Both Israel and Lebanon are represented by their ambassadors to the US, CNN reported.

On Tuesday, Israel kept up strikes on a string of towns in southern Lebanon, despite a US-mediated partial ceasefire ​announced on Monday.

President Donald Trump on Monday held two tense calls with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and angrily confronted him on one of the phone calls, according to reports.

Trump called Netanyahu after the Israeli president on Monday ordered strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh.

Israel pounded Dahiyeh early in the war but has carried out only two strikes there since Trump declared a Lebanon ceasefire in April.

Tehran has insisted that Lebanon should be part of a ceasefire agreement to facilitate negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and lift a US blockade of Iranian ports. 

The renewed attacks happened after Iran stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the US and Israel, according to reports Tuesday from two semiofficial Iranian news agencies.

President Donald Trump disputed the claim and said talks were continuing.

The reports by the Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, came as tensions flared in Israel’s separate-but-related fight against the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In other developments, the US military said it fired a missile to disable an oil tanker heading for the Iranian port of Kharg Island.

It was the seventh ship stopped by the military while trying to run a maritime blockade on Iran, US Central Command said.

The Botswana-flagged merchant vessel M/T Lexie was stopped by an aircraft firing a Hellfire missile into its engine room after the crew ignored repeated warnings over 24 hours, the post said.

President Donald Trump announced the maritime blockade after earlier talks between Iranian and American delegations fell through in April.  

US Central Command said Iran fired missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain, which were thwarted or failed, prompting US forces to hit back at Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Iran launched several ballistic missiles toward regional neighbors; however, all failed to hit their intended targets. Two Iranian missiles fired at Kuwait fell short or broke apart enroute, and three missiles launched at Bahrain were immediately intercepted by U.S. and Bahrain air defense forces,” CENTCOM said on X.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said ​it had attacked the US Fifth Fleet headquarters, a US naval facility in Bahrain, with missiles and drones.

Iranian state media reported the Guards launched the attack in response to US strikes on Qeshm Island.

Iran and the US said last week that they had reached a tentative deal to halt ​the war, but the two sides have yet to sign off on any agreement. 

The US and Iran traded renewed fire in the Middle East on Wednesday as tensions continued over the fate of peace talks to eventually bring an end to the conflict.

The US military said it carried out “self-defense” strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

The US Central Command said the strikes were in response to what it described as “attempted attacks by Iran across the Middle East.”

The US military earlier said it stopped an oil tanker headed toward Iran that was trying to evade a US maritime blockade around the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it had targeted the headquarters of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain and another country in its attack, without naming Kuwait.

Iran initially fired drones at a vessel transiting the Persian Gulf after the US targeted the oil tanker, US officials said.

Iran said its forces fired drones and missiles targeting US installations in response to the US attack on Iran’s Qeshm Island.