Iranian Missile Kills a Worker in Kuwait Hours After Jordan Shoots Down Five More

KUWAIT CITY — An Iranian missile slammed into a building belonging to a Chinese company in northern Kuwait on Thursday, killing one worker and severely damaging the structure, Kuwait's military said. The Defense Ministry called the attack "heinous Iranian aggression" and said it caused severe material damage.

The strike landed only hours after Jordan's air defenses shot down five missiles launched from Iran in the early morning, according to the kingdom's state-run news agency. No casualties were reported in Jordan.

Both attacks followed what U.S. Central Command described as the completion of a heavy wave of strikes against Iran. American forces hit dozens of targets belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including military command centers and missile and drone production facilities. CENTCOM said the operation was designed to "further diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping and neighbouring Gulf countries." It was itself a response to an earlier Iranian missile attack on a U.S. base in Jordan.

The Revolutionary Guard offered a very different account. It claimed to have struck Al Azraq Airbase in Jordan, asserting that it destroyed three F-35 fighter jets, damaged three more and killed American personnel. It also claimed hits on Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, saying it destroyed drone hangars and fuel storage. None of those claims have been independently verified, and neither the Pentagon nor the Jordanian military has confirmed them.

Separately, U.S. and Saudi forces struck Iran-backed militias in Iraq. The Associated Press reported at least 26 killed; other accounts put the toll at 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers. On Wednesday, drone strikes ignited fires aboard natural gas vessels at Egypt's Damietta port. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denied Iranian involvement in the Egypt attack and suggested Israel may have staged it as a false flag.

The economic damage is now visible on every shipping manifest in the region. Weekly energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed from 82 vessels to 39, forcing traders into expensive workarounds through Egypt's Red Sea ports and overland pipelines. Oil prices jumped 7.3 percent as the latest round of hostilities resumed.

The war began in late February, when the United States and Israel launched bombing campaigns inside Iran. A temporary ceasefire reached in June collapsed after renewed fighting over the Strait of Hormuz. Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain and other countries that host American military facilities have been hit repeatedly since, drawn into a conflict none of them started.

Mediators are still trying. Pakistan confirmed that U.S.-Iran negotiations continue. "We note with concern that the security situation remains precarious," said Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi, adding that talks are focused on normalizing conditions in the Strait of Hormuz and that the sides "should find a solution through dialogue and diplomacy."

President Trump predicted at the outset that the war would last four to five weeks. It is now in its sixth month, and his approval rating on Iran policy has slipped since last month. The dead worker in northern Kuwait was not an American, an Israeli or an Iranian — a fact that increasingly describes the casualty lists coming out of the Gulf.