Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed on Sunday that it had destroyed eight US military infrastructures in Kuwait and Bahrain in a joint missile and drone operation — describing the strikes as retaliation for a second wave of US military attacks on Iranian targets. The IRGC’s naval and aerospace forces launched ballistic missiles and drones between 2:00am and 3:00am local time, targeting the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait and the US Fifth Fleet headquarters at Port Salman in Bahrain.
The Islamabad MOU is eleven days old. Both signatories are now bombing each other.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms its determination to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity against U.S. military aggression,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry stated on Sunday.
The Sequence: Three Days, Three Escalations
It started Thursday with a drone hitting a cargo ship. It ended Sunday morning with ballistic missiles hitting Kuwait.
CENTCOM confirmed that Iran was given an opportunity to honour the ceasefire agreement after Friday’s US strikes but instead launched a one-way attack drone that struck the Panama-flagged tanker M/T Kiku early Saturday — carrying two million barrels of crude through the Strait of Hormuz. US aircraft then targeted Iranian military surveillance infrastructure, communications systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities and minelaying capabilities in response, hitting ten military targets in a single night.
Then came Trump’s threat. “It is very possible that they will never learn,” Trump wrote on Saturday, as CNN live coverage captured. “There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist.“
Then Iran struck back — not at ships, but at US military installations across the Gulf.
Bahrain Calls Emergency UN Security Council Session
Bahrain strongly condemned the renewed Iranian attack on its territory, calling on the UN Security Council to hold an urgent session. The ministry said the latest attack demonstrated that Iran’s actions were “not an isolated incident”, but rather a deliberate and repeated pattern of attacks against the kingdom’s sovereignty, urging the Council to ensure implementation of Resolution 2817 of 2026.
Egypt and Kuwait also swiftly condemned the attack. Qatar and Egypt affirmed the importance of building on the US-Iran Islamabad MOU negotiating track, stressing implementation of agreed measures — a position that reads increasingly like wishful thinking as Gulf News reported the scale of the overnight IRGC operation.
The Root Cause: Who Controls the Strait?
Experts say the US and Iran came to fundamentally different understandings of how the June deal should be enforced. Al Jazeera’s correspondent explained the central dispute: “Article Five of the memorandum of understanding, according to the Iranian officials, is clearly saying that any ship has to be in full coordination with the Iranian authorities. But that is not the understanding of the Americans. The Americans are saying, ‘Well, if it is going through the Omani territorial waters, they do not need to coordinate with the Iranian authorities.'”
That disagreement — over which route ships take and who grants permission — is what started the shooting. Not ideology. Not nuclear weapons. A shipping lane dispute.
Nearly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passed through the Strait of Hormuz in peacetime. That number explains why a disagreement about maritime routes escalated to ballistic missiles hitting US bases within three days.
What Pakistan Can Do Now
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has said it will continue mediating. But the situation has moved beyond mediation language. The IRGC is firing ballistic missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain. CENTCOM is hitting ten Iranian military targets in a single night. Both sides are accusing each other of violating the same document — a document that bears Islamabad’s name.
If the Strait closes again, Pakistan’s petrol price — currently Rs299.78 — reverses course immediately. The PSX, closed for holidays, reopens Monday to a fundamentally different world than when it last traded. The US strikes that began Friday were themselves a crisis. Sunday morning’s IRGC retaliation has turned a crisis into something larger.
Pakistan brokered this deal. Whether it can rescue it depends on whether anyone is still willing to listen.
