Kuwait resumes flights after Iranian attacks

Kuwait’s civil aviation authority said air traffic has resumed after it was suspended during Iranian attacks.

Officials had earlier announced that some flights were being diverted to other airports after Kuwait reported that its air defenses were firing at aerial targets. The authority said Kuwait International Airport was working normally and that flights would resume.

Kuwait closed its airspace after Iran announced new attacks on the Gulf country. Flights had been circling outside Kuwait before the closure. Kuwait International Airport took a direct hit from an Iranian strike last week that killed one person and wounded dozens.

Bahrain sounded its missile alert sirens on Thursday after Iran said it was attacking the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is headquartered in the country. The US embassy in Jordan issued an alert saying reports indicated missiles, drones or rockets were in Jordanian airspace.

US President Donald Trump warned of a strong response to Iran’s missile and drone attacks on US allies in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan, but also said a deal was within reach. “We’re gonna hit ’em again hard today … and we’ll see what happens with a deal,” he said. “We’re really close to a deal but they keep on tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers.”

Trump said he planned to tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate against Iran this week, but when Israel did strike Iran, he claimed in a BBC interview that the “missiles had already gone.” He later denied that Netanyahu had defied him.

Twenty-two countries, including the United States, Australia and European nations, jointly warned Iran on Thursday to stop attacking people “on our soil.” In a joint statement released before the second round of US strikes, the countries condemned Iranian security services for using international and local criminal gangs for plots in Europe, North America and Australia.

The statement said attempts to kill, kidnap, harass, intimidate or otherwise attack people on their soil undermine national sovereignty and international norms. The countries accused Iran of attacks across Europe targeting Jewish communities, Iranian journalists and US journalists. They singled out an Iran-linked group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, which has claimed responsibility for attacks on Jewish communities in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador last year after accusing Tehran of directing antisemitic attacks, including an arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne and the torching of a kosher cafe in Sydney. Canberra also withdrew its ambassador to Iran and suspended operations at its embassy in Tehran.

The statement was issued by Albania, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United States.

Brett McGurk, who served in senior national security positions in the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, told CNN that the strikes were highly telegraphed. “What they’re trying to do is manage that escalation, to basically say to Iran, we’re going to respond, this is coming, but this is not a restart of the campaign we started in February,” he said.

McGurk said he was seeing nothing from the Iranians suggesting they were on the verge of a deal. “If these strikes are designed to pressure Iran into doing a deal, I don’t think that objective will be met,” he said.

Dan Shapiro, the former US ambassador to Israel, said Thursday’s strikes showed that Iran has the leverage in negotiations with the Trump administration. “It is Trump that is desperate for them to sign the agreement, as his statements reveal, and Iran that is dragging their feet,” he wrote in a post online.