ByDANIELLE GREYMAN-KENNARD

JULY 19, 2026 14:37

Kuwait's essential facilities stood out as an appealing option for Iran seeking to raise tensions without triggering a major backlash from its Gulf neighbors, international relations expert Dr. Arman Mahmoudian, a research fellow at the University of South Florida's Global and National Security Institute, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Over the weekend, Iranian strikes inflicted major harm on a power generation facility, a water desalination plant and multiple residential zones in Kuwait. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation confirmed on Saturday that one of its oil sites suffered repeated Iranian strikes, leading to extensive material losses and several injuries.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps asserted the strikes hit a US military support hub at Kuwait's Camp Arifjan and destroyed a radar installation at Ali Al Salem Air Base.

The strikes, which also affected Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, extended into Sunday, indicating Iran has shifted its priorities, Mahmoudian noted.

The actions reflect calibrated signaling by the Islamic Republic, he said, making clear that Iran will ramp up pressure on Gulf states when it serves its wider strategic aims.

Although willing to intensify strikes on the Gulf, Mahmoudian indicated this does not mean Iran has dropped diplomatic outreach to its neighbors. Instead, the regime now focuses on survival.

Tehran has shifted its goals. Its main aim now is not maintaining calm with the Gulf states but securing the regime's survival and exiting the current conflict with the United States without seeming strategically beaten or isolated, while ideally gaining concessions from Washington, he said.

Kuwait's infrastructure emerges as a relatively appealing target

In this context, Kuwait's critical facilities became a relatively appealing target. The country hosts key US military assets and acts as a major logistics base for American operations, giving Iran cover for its actions while facing more limited military options and arguably less inclination to respond compared with other Gulf nations.

Regarding the choice of critical infrastructure over purely military targets, Mahmoudian said it likely served as a message to the United States.

Recent reports indicate the United States has broadened its strikes on Iran's critical infrastructure in southern Iran, he observed. By hitting facilities in Kuwait, Tehran signals that continued attacks on its own infrastructure will draw a response. Rather than striking the US mainland directly, Iran shows it can impose costs on America's regional partners, raising the political and strategic price of further escalation for Washington.

Iranian media claimed on Saturday that the United States struck a desalination plant in the village of Bonji on the Iranian coast, cutting water supplies to several villages. The reported attack on Iran's water infrastructure occurs as the country already faces a severe water crisis that has sparked notable social unrest in recent years.

Kuwait placed in extremely high stress category for water

The World Resources Institute ranked both Kuwait and Iran in the extremely high category of the National Water Stress Ranking of 2023, alongside other Gulf states and Israel.

Mahmoudian added that the Islamic Republic also signals it can still threaten the energy infrastructure of US partners in the Gulf, enabling further disruption to global energy markets and the world economy should the United States expand its campaign to include Iran's oil and gas sector.

Energy markets already face pressure from tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, and any prolonged disruption to Gulf oil or gas output, or damage to refineries and other facilities that take significant time to repair, could create major shocks to global energy markets and the broader international economy, he emphasized.

On Friday, a day before the attacks on Kuwaiti infrastructure, the United States struck roads and bridges linked to Bandar Abbas, Iran's main port handling roughly half of the country's trade. Iranian media also reported strikes on power plants in Jask.