Iran attacks Kuwait oil refinery, says it is developing new missiles – National
Tehran stepped up its attacks on energy facilities in the Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed a major Iranian natural gas field in South Pars earlier in the week.
Two waves of Iranian jets attacked an oil refinery in Kuwait early Friday, setting it on fire. The Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, capable of processing 730,000 barrels of oil per day, is one of the largest in the Middle East. It was damaged on Thursday in another attack by Iran.
Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said the fire broke out after debris from a reported site landed in a warehouse, while Saudi Arabia reported that it had shot down several planes targeting oil in the Eastern Province.
Iran defiantly denied on Friday that it would deny its enemies and was building missiles nearly three weeks into the US-Israeli strikes that have killed dozens of Tehran’s top leaders and crippled its weapons and energy industries.
Iran fired back at Israel and neighboring Gulf Arab states as many in the region marked one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar.
With little information coming out of Iran, it was not clear how much damage had been done to its arms, nuclear facilities or forces since the war began in Feb. 28 or even who really was in charge of the country. But Iran has shown it still has the power to strike, suffocating oil supplies and crippling the global economy, raising food and fuel prices far across the Middle East.
The US and Israel have given many goals to the conflict, from the hope of fueling an uprising to topple Iran’s leadership to ending its nuclear and missile programs. There have been no public signs of any such uprising and it is not clear what capabilities Iran has, so it is unclear how or when the war will end.
Iran attacks power plants
A powerful explosion rocked Dubai as air defenses tackled the fire that reached the city, where people were observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
In Iran, meanwhile, many were marking Nowruz, the Persian new year – as Israel launched new strikes, and explosions were heard in Tehran.
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Loud explosions were heard in Jerusalem after the Israeli military warned of incoming Iranian missiles.
In addition to lightly attacking Iran, Israel regularly attacks Lebanon, targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists. On Friday, it transferred its attack to Syria, saying it hit infrastructure in response to what it described as an attack by the Druze minority in the southern province of Sweida. Syria’s SANA news agency did not immediately confirm the attack.
More than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran during the war. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have left more than a million people dead, according to the Lebanese government, which says more than 1,000 people have been killed. Israel says it has killed more than 500 Hezbollah terrorists.
In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire. Four people were also killed in the West Bank which was attacked by an Iranian missile strike.
13 members of the US military died.
Still building missiles, Iran says
American and Israeli leaders say weeks of strikes have decimated Iran’s military. Airstrikes also killed its supreme leader, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council and dozens of other high-ranking military and political leaders.
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Iran’s navy had been crippled and its air force crippled, adding that its missile production capability had been eliminated. But the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard insisted in a statement on Friday that it was still being produced.
“We are producing missiles even in the midst of war, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling,” spokesman General Ali Mohammad Naeini was quoted as saying in an Iranian-owned newspaper.
Neeini added that Iran had no intention of demanding an immediate end to the war. “These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” he said.
Underscoring the great pressure the Iranian leadership is under, shortly after the statement was issued, Iranian state television said Naeini had been killed in a plane crash.
The country’s new leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei also issued a rare statement, saying Iran’s enemies needed their “security”.
Khamenei has not been seen since succeeding his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war.
Iran’s attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf combined with its seizure of ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and other sensitive goods are transported, have raised concerns about a global energy crisis.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, has risen during the war, and was at US$107 in morning trading on Friday, up 47 percent since the war began.
The increase in fuel prices comes at a time when many world leaders are already struggling to reduce the prices of food and other commodities. Asia is hit hard as most of the oil and gas from the Strait of Hormuz is transported there.
But the price shock reverberates throughout the world economy. Key raw materials – such as helium used to make computer chips and sulphur, the raw material in fertilizers – are blocked and could soon be in short supply, raising prices for goods all the way up the supply chain.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
