Tehran no longer strikes where the explosion is loudest and the television effect is greatest. It acts more coldly: it looks for weak links in the American security system in the Persian Gulf and applies pressure precisely there. Bahrain and Kuwait have become not random targets for Iran, but convenient instruments in a larger game against Washington. A strike against them is painful enough to demonstrate power, spread fear through markets, damage confidence in American guarantees, and make U.S. allies nervous. Yet it is still not large enough to automatically trigger a full scale war.
This is the new logic of Tehran: not to break the region with a single blow, but to shake it methodically, forcing every Gulf capital to ask itself whether the Americans will come to its rescue when the missiles are already flying toward it.
The war in the Persian Gulf entered its most dangerous phase not when thousands of missiles and drones were flying across the region. The most alarming stage began later, after the April 8 ceasefire, when there was supposed to be a formal pause, but in practice Iran changed tactics. Instead of striking the most visible economic centers, it began systematically pressuring those who are important enough to the United States, but not politically protected enough for an attack against them to automatically provoke a devastating response.
That is precisely why Bahrain and Kuwait ended up at the center of Iran’s new strategy. Not because they are stronger than Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar. Quite the opposite. They became convenient targets because they occupy a dangerous intermediate zone: too significant for the American military architecture for strikes against them to be empty gestures, but too small for Washington to risk a full scale war with Iran every time.
This is the essence of Iran’s current game: inflict pain, but in measured doses; demonstrate strength, but not cross the threshold beyond which the United States would be forced to respond without hesitation; destroy confidence in American guarantees, but deny the adversary a convenient pretext for a major campaign. Tehran is no longer merely attacking facilities. It is attacking the very logic of security in the Persian Gulf.
Small Monarchies Under Heavy Pressure
After the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council found themselves on the front line of a war they had neither started nor wanted. The formal ceasefire of April 8 and the subsequent memorandum of understanding did not stabilize the region. On the contrary, they created a new gray zone: the war seemed to have ended, yet the attacks continued; diplomacy appeared to be functioning, yet missiles and drones remained tools of negotiation.
Before the ceasefire, the logic of Iranian strikes was more direct. Tehran sought to create maximum economic chaos, hit global energy and trade chains, and force external actors to demand de-escalation. That is why, according to the data cited, almost half of the more than seven thousand missiles and drones launched by Iran at Gulf countries between February and June targeted the UAE. It was a strike against the region’s most connected and most globalized commercial hub.
After April, the objective changed. Iran no longer needed to break the entire Gulf’s economic rhythm at any cost. It needed to prove that it had not been broken, that the ceasefire was not a capitulation, that its military resources remained intact, and that its negotiating position could still be backed by force. For that purpose, the UAE was too large a target: a new massive strike against it could have provoked a harsher international reaction. Saudi Arabia was even riskier. Qatar and Oman long retained additional diplomatic value for Tehran. Bahrain and Kuwait, however, became almost ideal objects of selective pressure.
Both states are small in territory and population. Both depend on the Strait of Hormuz and maritime communications. Both are located between more powerful neighbors and are constantly forced to compensate for their vulnerability through external guarantees. Kuwait has already lived through the catastrophe of 1990, when the Iraqi invasion showed that a small oil state without an effective external umbrella could be destroyed as an independent actor within days. Bahrain carries a different, but no less acute, risk: internal sectarian sensitivity linked to the presence of a large Shiite population and constant accusations against Iran of trying to use that factor to pressure Manama.
Iran understands this vulnerability. In its calculations, Bahrain and Kuwait are not merely points on a map. They are political sensors of American reliability. If Washington remains silent after strikes against them, the entire region draws a conclusion: American guarantees have become selective. If Washington responds, Tehran gets a chance to show that the United States is once again being pulled into a war it is trying to avoid.
Bahrain Chose Toughness. Kuwait Chose Caution. Neither Was Protected
The main paradox of the current crisis is that Bahrain and Kuwait pursued almost opposite policies toward Iran, yet ended up with the same vulnerability.
Bahrain has always been on the hard-line flank of Arab policy toward Tehran. It joined the Abraham Accords in 2020, moved closer to Israel, and before the war remained the only Gulf state without an embassy in Tehran. In December 2023, Bahrain became the only Arab country to publicly join Operation Prosperity Guardian, the Western initiative to counter Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. For Iran, this had long made Manama not simply an American partner, but part of an architecture Tehran sees as directed against itself.
Kuwait, by contrast, traditionally acted more cautiously. It sought to maintain channels with Iran, develop pragmatic political and economic ties, and avoid demonstrative rapprochement with Israel. Moreover, Kuwait’s previous parliament adopted laws criminalizing even indirect interaction with Israelis. In May, after the Trump administration launched its unsuccessful Project Freedom operation to open the Strait of Hormuz, Kuwait even temporarily closed its airspace to the United States.
The logic was understandable: Bahrain sought security through firm alignment with Washington and its regional partners; Kuwait sought it through caution, balance, and the reduction of irritants for Tehran. But Iranian strikes exposed the limits of both strategies. The hard line did not save Bahrain. Caution did not protect Kuwait.
This is a fundamental lesson for the entire Gulf. Iran does not automatically reward moderation, and it does not necessarily punish only confrontation. It chooses targets not according to a moral scale and not according to diplomatic etiquette. It chooses points where a strike produces maximum political effect at minimum risk of major retaliation.
Bahrain and Kuwait became such points not because of their mistakes, but because of the systemic weakness of the regional order. Neither of them can deter Iran on its own. But the very purpose of the American presence, and the very purpose of the Gulf Cooperation Council, is to ensure that small states are not left face to face with a major regional power. If they are still left alone, then the problem is not in Manama or Kuwait City. The problem lies in the security architecture itself.
The American Umbrella Has Started to Leak
For Bahrain and Kuwait, American guarantees are not an abstract diplomatic formula. Both countries have the status of major non-NATO allies of the United States. In 2023, Bahrain signed the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement with the United States, an arrangement resembling a tailor-made security pact. Bahrain hosts the most important naval element of the American presence in the region. Kuwait remains one of the key nodes of U.S. military logistics after the 1991 war and the later campaigns in Iraq.
That is why the absence of a tough U.S. reaction to repeated Iranian attacks after the ceasefire became not a technical delay, but a political signal. Washington condemned the strikes rhetorically, but for a long time did not move to actions capable of changing Tehran’s calculations. For allies, this is the worst option: guarantees exist on paper, bases exist physically, agreements have been signed, yet the adversary continues testing the system and receives no immediate punishment.
The administration of President Trump found itself trapped by its own strategy. On the one hand, Washington cannot allow Iran to strike allies with impunity, because that destroys American credibility not only in the Gulf, but also in other regions, from East Asia to Europe. On the other hand, every U.S. military response increases the risk of a new major war, which the Gulf states themselves are trying to avoid, since they would be the first to pay for its economic and infrastructural consequences.
Iran is playing precisely on this. It raises the stakes gradually. After the delayed American response in mid-July, Tehran intensified attacks not only against Bahrain and Kuwait, but also against Qatar, Oman, and Jordan. It is the same strategy of selective coercion, only at a higher level of escalation. Iran is expanding the geography of pressure, but doing so in a way that leaves Washington tempted each time not to respond too strongly.
In effect, Tehran is dictating the tempo of the conflict. It decides where the next strike will occur, which U.S. ally will come under pressure, and how far it can go without provoking a full scale campaign. For a superpower, this is an extremely uncomfortable position: formally, the United States is stronger, but the operational initiative belongs to the adversary.
Hormuz as the Cash Register of War
Against this background, the metamorphosis of American policy toward the Strait of Hormuz is especially revealing. President Trump first announced his intention to impose heavy fees on all commercial shipping through the strait, effectively a 20 percent charge for American protection. Then, less than a day later, he abandoned the idea under pressure from Gulf leaders, international organizations, and shipping companies.
The idea itself was explosive. For months, Washington had explained the continuation of the war by saying that Iran sought to control Hormuz, impose a fee for passage, and turn the strait into an instrument of blackmail against the global economy. After that, the American president effectively proposed his own version of the same logic: if the United States provides security, wealthy countries must pay.
According to estimates, a 20 percent fee could have generated around 240 million dollars a day. For the White House, this looked like a deal: security in exchange for money, military power as a paid service, the strait as a geopolitical tollbooth. For the Gulf states, it looked different: Washington was beginning to commercialize the very security system for which they had already been paying for decades politically, through investments, energy policy, and military contracts.
Trump’s reversal was rapid. He said he would replace the 20 percent United States Reimbursement Fee with trade and investment agreements that Gulf countries would conclude with the United States. In other words, the tariff disappeared, but the logic remained: American protection had to be converted into economic obligations from partners.
This approach deepens allied doubts. Previously, the American presence in the Gulf was presented as a strategic necessity: protecting energy flows, deterring Iran, preserving the stability of the global economy, and ensuring the security of allies. Now it increasingly looks like a matter of bargaining. That does not mean the United States is leaving. On the contrary, U.S. Central Command began a new round of strikes against Iranian facilities connected to Tehran’s ability to attack vessels in the strait. The blockade of Iran was restored. But the very unpredictability of the American line has become a risk factor.
For Iran, this is a gift. Tehran can tell its neighbors: the United States is not protecting you as allies, it is sending you a bill. It can tell its own population: Washington wants to control oil and sea routes. It can tell international players: the crisis in Hormuz is caused not only by Iran, but also by American power politics.
The Economy of Fear: When Missiles Hit Credit Ratings
The strikes against Bahrain and Kuwait have not only a military dimension. Their real target is the economy of trust. Oil monarchies live not only on resource reserves, but also on a reputation for reliability: stable exports, protected ports, functioning airports, predictable insurance rates, credit ratings, investment plans, and transport corridors.
When a drone strikes an airport or a missile threatens an oil terminal, the damage is not limited to the destroyed facility. Insurance costs begin to rise. Shipowners recalculate routes. Investors demand a risk premium. Rating agencies look not only at budget indicators, but also at the state’s ability to guarantee economic continuity. That is precisely why Bahrain and Kuwait can be hit in a limited, but painful, way.
In April, Moody’s downgraded Bahrain’s rating outlook from stable to negative. In the same month, Kuwait, according to the data cited, found itself for the first time since the 1990 war in a situation of zero oil exports. Even if such episodes are short-lived, the political effect is enormous. For an oil state, zero exports are not merely an economic indicator. They are a blow to the basic function of the state as a supplier of energy, revenue, and stability.
Iran does not necessarily need to destroy the economy of Kuwait or Bahrain. It is enough to make markets doubt their security. It is enough to show that a nearby American base does not guarantee immunity. It is enough to turn every new day into a question: will there be an attack today, will the airspace close, will the ship pass, will the plane take off, will insurance coverage remain in place?
This is how war below the threshold of major war works. It rarely produces a bright image of victory, but it gradually corrodes willpower, trust, and financial resilience.
The Gulf Cooperation Council Has Become a Council of Anxiety
An equally serious issue is the absence of a consolidated reaction within the Gulf Cooperation Council itself. Before the ceasefire, Iranian attacks against the countries of the region generated a sense of shared threat. Everyone understood: if one port is burning, the next one may belong to a neighbor; if missiles are flying toward one airport, insurance rates rise for all; if Hormuz becomes a war zone, the entire Gulf loses.
After April, that solidarity became less obvious. Talk began circulating in the region that individual states might be seeking their own informal arrangements with Iran and its allies. There is no hard evidence of this, but the very possibility of such suspicions already shows the depth of distrust. Tehran knows precisely how to work with such cracks.
For Iran, the ideal model is not total war against all Gulf monarchies, but differentiated pressure: speak with some, frighten others, temporarily avoid touching a third group, and use a fourth as a demonstrative target. This produces a regional version of an old imperial logic: divide the risks, fracture the collective response, and force every capital to think first about itself.
But the geography of the Gulf does not allow anyone to live for long in a mode of individual survival. Bahrain and Kuwait are not isolated from their neighbors. Strikes against them affect routes, prices, insurance, investment, air traffic, and military calculations across the entire region. The expansion of attacks to Qatar and Oman, as well as strikes against vessels under Emirati and Saudi flags, shows that a limited conflict does not remain limited simply because diplomats want it to.
Any bilateral deal between an individual monarchy and Iran under such conditions resembles an attempt to cover an open artery with a bandage. It may temporarily reduce the risk for one capital, but it does not change the strategic reality: as long as Tehran can choose weak links and avoid a collective response, everyone remains vulnerable.
The Saudi Front and the Houthi Factor
In parallel with the strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait, the Yemeni front is coming back to life. The Houthis carried out a missile and drone attack on Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia, the largest attack of its kind in four years. The Houthi leadership described it as a response to the strike on Sanaa airport, which, according to Yemen’s internationally recognized government, was intended to prevent the landing of an Iranian aircraft carrying Houthi representatives.
This episode matters not in isolation, but as part of the broader picture. If Saudi Arabia is drawn again into direct confrontation with the Houthis, the war with Iran ceases to be a series of pinpoint strikes and turns into a regional, multi-channel crisis. Hormuz, the Red Sea, the Yemeni front, American bases, Gulf airports, tankers, and energy terminals begin to connect into a single system of pressure.
For Riyadh, this is especially sensitive. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has spent recent years trying to move Saudi Arabia out of the state of permanent military mobilization around Yemen and focus instead on Vision 2030, investment, megaprojects, the technology sector, and the transformation of the kingdom into a center of the new regional economy. The return of Houthi strikes on Saudi facilities breaks that trajectory. It once again places security above development.
For the United States, this is also a problem. If Saudi Arabia demands more active American military and diplomatic support, Washington will be forced to distribute resources among protecting Hormuz, deterring Iran, supporting smaller allies, striking Iranian infrastructure, and stabilizing the Yemeni front. This is exactly the kind of overload Tehran may be counting on.
Why Managed Instability Benefits Iran
At first glance, Iran’s strategy is risky. Strikes on U.S. allies, attacks on shipping, pressure on small monarchies, and the involvement of the Houthis could all provoke a large-scale response. But judging by the dynamics, Tehran is operating on a different calculation: the United States and the Gulf states fear a major war more than Iran fears limited retaliatory strikes.
This does not mean that Iran wants total escalation. Quite the opposite. Its goal is managed instability. It allows Tehran to strengthen its negotiating position, demonstrate resilience to its domestic audience, show allies and proxies that the center of resistance is still alive, and signal to its neighbors that security is impossible without taking Tehran’s interests into account.
Managed instability also benefits Iran because it exposes the differences between the United States and the Gulf states. Washington thinks in categories of strikes, blockades, tariffs, freedom of navigation, and military reputation. The Gulf monarchies think about infrastructure survival, uninterrupted exports, investment climate, air traffic, insurance rates, internal stability, and the risk of social tension. Their interests overlap, but they do not fully coincide.
When Trump proposes charging for passage through Hormuz and then abandons the idea under pressure from partners, it demonstrates not the strength of American strategy, but its nervousness. When the United States responds to Iranian attacks late and selectively, it does not deter Tehran; it teaches Iran how to calibrate violence more precisely. When the GCC fails to form a firm collective response mechanism, Iran gains room for maneuver.
Tehran’s main strength now is not the number of missiles it has. It is its ability to read the weaknesses of its adversaries: American fatigue with wars, the Gulf’s fear of economic shock, rivalry among the monarchies, the global market’s dependence on Hormuz, and every side’s reluctance to say the word war too loudly.
What Washington Is Losing
For the United States, the crisis around Bahrain and Kuwait is dangerous not only because of military losses or the risk of rising oil prices. It is destroying the very model of American influence. American power in the Gulf has always rested not only on aircraft carriers, bases, and missiles. It has rested on the belief that alliance with Washington reduces risk for partners. If that belief weakens, the entire architecture begins to change shape.
Bahrain and Kuwait raise an uncomfortable question: what does major non-NATO ally status mean if an adversary can carry out repeated strikes without an immediate and tough response? What does an individual security agreement mean if it does not change Iran’s behavior? What does an American base mean if it becomes not a shield, but a magnet for threats?
The answers to these questions are being heard not only in Manama and Kuwait City. They are being heard in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Muscat, Amman, Cairo, Ankara, Seoul, Tokyo, Warsaw, and Taipei. Any American uncertainty in one region becomes an argument for reassessing risks in another.
The Trump administration is trying to combine the incompatible: preserve the status of the main security guarantor, shift the financial burden onto wealthy partners, avoid a major war, avoid looking weak, deter Iran, and negotiate at the same time. In theory, this may look like pragmatism. In reality, the adversary reads such maneuvering as inconsistency.
Iran’s strategy of selective coercion strikes precisely at that gap: the space between American rhetoric and America’s willingness to pay the price.
What the Gulf States Must Understand
Bahrain and Kuwait show that individual strategies toward Iran have exhausted themselves. Neither hard confrontation nor cautious dialogue works if it is not embedded in a collective defense system. Each capital may have its own style, its own channels, and its own red lines, but deterrence must be collective.
For the GCC, this means a difficult choice. Collective security requires concessions in autonomy. Responses must be coordinated, intelligence shared, air and missile defense integrated, crisis response protocols unified, ports and airports protected not as national facilities, but as elements of a common system. It must be determined in advance which strike against one state is considered a strike against all, and what political, economic, or military response will follow.
Without this, every country will try to buy itself a temporary silence. But the temporary silence of one neighbor is often paid for by thunder over another. Iran will exploit these gaps until the cost of selective strikes becomes higher than their benefit.
The Gulf states have lived for too long under the illusion that wealth, American bases, diplomatic flexibility, and technological modernization can replace collective strategic discipline. Bahrain and Kuwait are now paying for that illusion first. But not last.
Conclusion: The Weak Link Has Already Been Found
Iran did not choose Bahrain and Kuwait by accident. It found the weak point in the regional security system and began pressing exactly where the pain is visible and the response is not guaranteed. This is not chaotic revenge and not a simple demonstration of force. It is a calculated policy of pressure, in which a missile becomes a diplomatic argument, a drone becomes a negotiating instrument, and a small state becomes a test of a great power’s reliability.
For Washington, the danger is that every unanswered strike reduces the weight of American guarantees. Every delayed response increases the risk of a major war. Every abrupt reversal over Hormuz convinces allies that the United States may turn security into a transaction, and convinces adversaries that the American line can be shaken.
For the Gulf states, the lesson is even harsher. Stable security cannot be built if everyone negotiates their own pause while a neighbor burns. Iran cannot be deterred by six different strategies if Tehran acts according to one logic. The American umbrella cannot be treated as eternal if its owner simultaneously promises protection, demands compensation, and hesitates before responding.
Bahrain and Kuwait have become not peripheral victims of the crisis, but the central symptom of a new era in the Gulf. The old formula no longer works: the United States protects, the monarchies pay, Iran is deterred, and oil keeps flowing. Everything is now more complex and more dangerous. Iran has learned to strike not the strongest target, but the most convenient one. And a system in which a weak link can be attacked without collective punishment is no longer a security system. It is an invitation to the next strike.