Aletho News

How Kuwait and Bahrain miscalculated by becoming launchpads for US strikes on Iran

By Mohammad Molaei | Press TV | July 27, 2026

On the afternoon of February 28, as the first dark clouds of joint Israeli-American military aggression gathered over Iran, a sports hall in the small southern city of Lamerd – a place that had once echoed with the squeak of sneakers and the thrill of competition – was transformed into a scene of unspeakable carnage.

Two American Increment One Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs), fitted with fragmentation warheads, tore through the facility while a women’s volleyball team was actively training inside. The gruesome and deliberate attack claimed many civilian lives, including dozens of children, and left scores more wounded and maimed.

In a grim parallel to the earlier attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, the US war machine initially refused to acknowledge its culpability in both incidents, due to massive global outcry, particularly in Minab.

Instead, American officials went so far as to formally and cynically attribute the tragedy IN BOTH to an alleged malfunction of an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile, a brazen attempt to absolve themselves of yet another unforgivable war crime.

The official American position attributed the civilian deaths in Lamerd to an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile – a KH-55 derivative that bears no resemblance whatsoever to an American PrSM, differing fundamentally in shape, flight trajectory, and terminal dive profile.

This assertion proved deeply peculiar, particularly after Iranian media published CCTV footage showing impact patterns unmistakably consistent with PrSM fragmentation warheads, alongside visuals clearly depicting a ballistic projectile descending in a manner entirely characteristic of the American weapon system.

Identifying the probable staging ground for this attack and others like it proved to be a matter of straightforward deduction. The United States employs the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to deploy two distinct families of short-range tactical ballistic missiles: the newer PrSM and the older MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), with maximum ranges of 500 and 300 kilometers, respectively.

Given these systems’ limited reach and the considerable operational threat posed by Iran-allied resistance groups throughout Iraq, it became increasingly evident that the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf had consented to allow American forces to utilize their territory as launch pads for aggression against Iran and its civilian population.

Liability for the strikes

In the weeks following the initial wave of US-Israeli military aggression against Iran, a substantial body of open-source evidence accumulated, enabling one to reconstruct the operational architecture behind the attacks with reasonable confidence.

Satellite imagery reviewed by independent researchers, munitions debris documented by Iranian media and corroborated by third-party analysts, and flight-path data derived from publicly accessible tracking sources collectively point to forward launch positions in Kuwait and Bahrain as the points of origin for a series of ballistic missile strikes against Iranian territory.

The ATACMS and the longer-range PrSM are neither cruise missiles nor air-launched munitions. They are ground-launched ballistic systems that demand substantial fixed or semi-fixed infrastructure, pre-positioned logistics, and complete host-nation cooperation – or at minimum, tacit acquiescence.

In practical terms, this arrangement extends far beyond granting overflight rights to American aircraft. The deployment of American artillery regiments fielding short-range ballistic missiles on Kuwaiti and Bahraini soil is not incidental but structural. Such weaponry would have served no purpose other than to strike at Iranian territory.

Diplomatically, Tehran delivered an explicit and time-bound demand to both Manama and Kuwait City: cease facilitating the war of aggression, expel the American military forces and their assets, or face the consequences.

The initial response from Bahrain and Kuwait was, in a word, silence – punctuated by formulaic statements affirming their alliance commitments while declining to confirm or deny the operational details that open-source evidence had already established.

It was not a neutral posture but represented a conscious and controversial choice to take sides in an active war, which carries inevitable consequences.
Lamerd sports hall attack

The denial and what came after

Both Kuwait and Bahrain moved quickly to deny the reports. Official statements from Kuwait City and Manama dismissed the open-source evidence as fabricated or misattributed, with Kuwaiti officials characterizing the satellite imagery and debris documentation as part of an Iranian information operation.

Bahraini authorities declined to comment on specific operational details, citing security considerations. The denials were categorical yet they did not survive the end of active hostilities.

In the weeks following the cessation of the initial combat phase, a more complete evidentiary picture emerged, placing Kuwait at the epicenter of the ballistic missile campaign against Iran.

CENTCOM released declassified strike footage confirming ground-launched ballistic operations, footage that independent analysts cross-referenced with geographic markers consistent with Kuwaiti territory.

The release, framed by US officials as a demonstration of operational effectiveness, had the unintended secondary effect of directly contradicting the categorical denials issued by Kuwait. More damaging still was the subsequent discovery of expended ATACMS canisters in the Kuwaiti desert, physical evidence that no official statement could plausibly explain away. The canisters confirmed not only the presence of the launch systems but also the scale and intensity of their operational use.

Kuwait’s role as the operational hub

With the resumption of active combat operations in recent weeks, following American attempts to establish an illegal maritime corridor in the Omani section of the Strait of Hormuz in brazen violation of the memorandum of understanding signed between the two sides, Kuwait’s role has intensified considerably.

The frequency of ballistic missile launches from Kuwaiti territory has increased markedly, a pattern fully consistent with Western reporting indicating that US PrSM stocks have been effectively depleted.

With PrSM availability now severely constrained, the operational burden of American ballistic missile attacks has shifted entirely back to the older ATACMS platform, and Kuwait has emerged as the primary launch hub for that capability.

The geographic logic is self-evident. Kuwait’s proximity to western Iran, and particularly to the southern province of Khuzestan, renders it the most efficient forward position for strikes targeting the military, economic, and energy infrastructure concentrated in that region.

Khuzestan is home to a substantial share of Iran’s oil production, refining capacity, and petrochemical industry, and has consequently emerged as a principal focal point of American military aggression. The volume of launches emanating from Kuwait reflects that strategic prioritization with unmistakable clarity.

The Incriminating Lights

The Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf have made every possible effort to suppress citizen documentation of military activity, imposing social media restrictions and punitive measures to limit the spread of footage that might complicate official denials.

Yet those efforts have proven increasingly ineffective. As the war has persisted, a steady and growing stream of video and photographic evidence has emerged from Kuwait, captured by residents documenting ballistic missile launches occurring with near-nightly regularity.

The imagery, showing missile contrails ascending over Kuwait and tracking northeast across or alongside Iraqi airspace before continuing toward Iranian territory, circulates widely across platforms such as Telegram.

Multiple photographs and video footage taken from different vantage points confirm the flight paths, the frequency, and the unmistakable signature of ground-launched ballistic systems operating from Kuwaiti soil with undeniable clarity.

The nightly launches have become, in a grim sense, a matter of public record, documented by ordinary Kuwaiti and Iraqi residents whose smartphones have captured what governments continue to officially deny.

The chasm between the official position and the visible reality has widened to a point where it functions less as a credible denial and more as a formal fiction, maintained by all parties for reasons of diplomatic convenience.

The Iranian counter-strike record

Iran has not absorbed this campaign passively. In the weeks following the intensification of launches from Kuwaiti territory, Iranian forces have conducted retaliatory strikes targeting the American military’s forward launch infrastructure.

A growing evidentiary record of these strikes, assembled from open-source footage, presents an intriguing visual signature involving what appear to be large secondary explosions following initial impact, characterized by the bright, fast-burning combustion profile associated with solid-propellant missile fuel.

The secondary detonations visible in circulating clips are inconsistent with conventional munitions storage and consistent with the ignition of solid rocket propellant – of the type utilized in ATACMS – either from fueled launcher vehicles or from stockpiled rounds awaiting deployment.

Several clips show fires burning after initial impact, with the characteristic white-orange flame column that propellant combustion produces distinguishing these events unmistakably from the black smoke of fuel or ordnance fires.

Survival and the limits of alignment

Small states make difficult choices under duress, caught precariously between a powerful patron’s operational requirements and a large neighbor’s legitimate security concerns.

Experts acknowledge that the constraints on Bahraini and Kuwaiti sovereignty, stemming from their profound dependence on the United States, are genuine and substantial.

But, they insist that acknowledgment of constraint is not the same as absolution from responsibility. Governments bear an obligation to their populations that supersedes alliance loyalties, an obligation to assess, without illusion, the risks that their choices are generating.

The current posture of the Persian Gulf states hosting American military bases and providing a launch pad for ballistic missile operations against Iran is deeply problematic.

It reflects, as per analysts, a perilous combination of structural dependency, institutional inertia, and a dangerous underestimation of Iranian anger, resolve, and military capability.

As one military expert told the Press TV website, these micro-states are not positioned to absorb the consequences of a sustained Iranian retaliatory campaign.

“Their small land masses, concentrated infrastructure, and limited strategic depth render them acutely vulnerable in ways that their larger patron is not. By gambling their national survival on the assumption that Iranian red lines are empty, and that US protection is everlasting, they are making a remarkably poor bet, one that history has rarely rewarded,” he noted.

July 27, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, United States