One person was killed in an Iranian attack in Bahrain, as countries in the region including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates intercept Iranian drones and missiles.
A 29-year-old woman was killed and eight people were injured when a residential building in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, was hit, the country’s Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
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The attack came after Bahrain’s Health Ministry reported on Monday that two people, including several children, were injured in an Iranian drone attack on the island of Sitra, south of Manama. Bahrain said late Monday that its air defenses had intercepted and destroyed 102 missiles and 173 drones launched in “Iranian aggression” against the kingdom.
In a statement, the General Command of the Bahrain Defense Forces described the attack as a “sinful Iranian aggression.”
Separately, incoming missile sirens sounded in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday morning.
At the same time, the Saudi Defense Ministry said it had destroyed two drones over the kingdom’s oil-rich eastern region, and in Kuwait, the National Guard said it had shot down six drones attacking northern and southern areas of the country.
Iran’s latest attacks on neighboring Gulf states come as US President Donald Trump told Republican lawmakers late on Monday that the US-Israel war against Iran would likely be a “short jaunt.”
But hours later, Trump threatened in a social media post that the United States would dramatically increase strikes if Iran tried to close the Strait of Hormuz.
In addition to firing missiles and drones at Israeli and US bases in the Gulf region, Iran has been attacking energy infrastructure, which, combined with its dominance over the Strait of Hormuz, has sent oil prices soaring.
Attacks ‘focused on energy infrastructure’
In the past 24 hours, sites in Qatar were also attacked, said Al Jazeera’s Aksel Zaimovic, reporting from Doha.
“We are hearing that 17 ballistic missiles and seven drones were intercepted and destroyed,” he said, adding that the escalation of attacks and the inability to move oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have forced Qatar to halt some of its production.
“These attacks are particularly focused on energy infrastructure,” our correspondent said, explaining that Bahrain’s Bapco had to declare force majeure after waves of Iranian attacks hit its energy facilities.
“That means you can’t meet some of these contractual supply obligations because of these disruptions,” he said.
Meanwhile, “large numbers” of drones have hit the Shaybah oil field in Saudi Arabia.
“That facility, for example, produces a million barrels of oil every day, and has now come under relentless attack in recent days,” Zaimovic said. “This is something that really raises a lot of questions about the security of energy coming from the Gulf.”
Brent crude, the international standard, rose to nearly $120 on Monday before falling, but was still around $90 a barrel on Tuesday, up nearly 24 percent from when the war began on Feb. 28.
Iran has prevented oil tankers from using the Strait of Hormuz, the sea route between the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman – the gateway to the Indian Ocean – through which 20 percent of the world’s oil is transported.
In a social media post Tuesday, Trump appeared not to acknowledge that, saying, “If Iran does anything to stop the flow of oil within the Strait of Hormuz, the United States of America will hit it TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have hit it so far.”
In an apparent response to Trump’s comments, published in Iranian state media, a spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ali Mohammad Naini, said that “Iran will determine when the war will end.”
