Iran War Live Updates: Drone Hits Kuwaiti Oil Refinery in New Attack on Gulf Energy Sites

A drone struck a major oil refinery in Kuwait on Friday, setting several units ablaze in the latest attack on energy infrastructure in the Middle East war. There was no sign of a deal to end the fighting after President Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or environmental damage at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery after the attack, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said, without saying where the drone came from. There have been multiple Iranian strikes at refineries, oil tankers, storage sites and other infrastructure across the region since the war started on Feb. 28.

Along with Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, normally the conduit for around a fifth of the world’s oil, the strikes have sent global oil prices soaring and raised fears a worldwide energy supply crunch. Mr. Trump has warned Iran that if it does not reopen the strait, the U.S. military will destroy the country’s power plants.

“Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran,” he wrote on social media late Thursday. “Bridges , then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST!”

Intentionally targeting energy infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law.

Earlier on Thursday, an airstrike that a U.S. official said was an American attack caused at least a partial collapse of a major highway bridge on a road between Tehran and a nearby city, killing at least eight people, Iranian news outlets said. Mr. Trump celebrated the damage to the bridge. He posted a video of a strike hitting the bridge, with the warning that more infrastructure would be destroyed if Iran did not “make a deal.”

Another strike, in Tehran, destroyed the Pasteur Institute of Iran, a major public health agency that produced and distributed vaccines, a spokesman for the health ministry said. It was unclear whether the United States or Israel was responsible for that attack.

Iranian leaders have been defiant in the face of the repeated threats from Mr. Trump this week. Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said in a statement carried by the country’s state news broadcaster that negotiations with Washington were impossible under current conditions.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have battered the Iranian military with thousands of bombs over nearly five weeks, but drone and missile attacks across the Gulf have continued.

On Friday, the United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said its defenses were responding to drones and missiles launched from Iran. The Israeli military said Iran had launched more missiles toward Israel, where the national emergency service reported several impact sites but no injuries.

The authorities in Kuwait said air defenses were intercepting drones and missiles, without saying where they came from. The Mina al-Ahmadi refinery struck on Friday was also attacked two weeks ago .

Here’s what else we’re covering:

War’s cost: Some estimates suggest the war could cost the United States as much as $1 billion a day, a total that underscores the economic trade-offs the Trump administration faces as the president had promised to focus on lowering consumer costs and other domestic issues.

Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,606 civilians , including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Thursday. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 1,345 Lebanese had been killed as of Thursday, since the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 50 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 17 people had been killed as of Friday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.

Photos show a highway bridge near Tehran that was damaged in a U.S. strike that President Trump celebrated on Thursday. The attack on the B1 bridge killed eight people and wounded 95, a local official told state media.

A U.S. military official said earlier that American forces had struck the bridge twice, saying it was a planned military supply route for Iran’s missile and drone forces. The local official, Ghodratollah Seif, the deputy governor of Alborz province, told state media that there was no military activity on the bridge and that it was not in use yet.

It is part of an ambitious highway project intended to connect Tehran to the Caspian Sea, giving motorists an alternative to windy mountainous roads. The highway is used regularly for commerce and by many Iranians who travel back and forth for weekend getaways.

An Iranian attack damaged a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait on Friday, according to Fatima Hayat, a spokeswoman for the Kuwaiti ministry of electricity, water, and renewable energy. Earlier Friday, the Kuwaiti army said it was responding to drones and missiles, though it did not say where they came from.

The Israeli military said Iran had launched more missiles toward Israel on Friday. A man was injured by debris after an impact in northern Israel, the national emergency service said. Fire and Rescue services said teams were sent to several possible impact sites around Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.

Drone and missile attacks were reported by several Gulf countries today. The United Arab Emirates’s defense ministry said Friday that it was responding to missiles and drones launched from Iran. The Saudi defense ministry said several drones were intercepted today, while Kuwait said its forces were responding to missiles and drones. The Saudi and Kuwaiti authorities did not say where the drones and missiles came from. One drone hit the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery in Kuwait.

A drone struck the Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery in Kuwait on Friday, setting several units ablaze, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said. There were no reports of injuries or environmental impact, it added .The company did not say where the drone came from. It was the latest in a number of attacks on the region’s energy infrastructure since the start of the war on Feb. 28.

In the shadow of war, some Iranians in the capital city of Tehran gathered outside on Thursday to celebrate Sizdah Bedar, a nature festival marking the 13th day of the Persian new year and the end of the two-week Nowruz holiday period.

Typically on Sizdah Bedar, families picnic outside, gather around rivers or streams, tell stories and take part in simple traditions that bind them to their heritage. This year, the festival took place amid a daily bombardment of Tehran and other parts of the country that has killed civilians, destroyed buildings and infrastructure and brought much of normal life to a grinding halt.

Clusters of families and groups of teenagers gathered on Thursday near Tabiat (Nature) Bridge in northern Tehran, a pedestrian bridge that connects two large parks, and Park-e Mellat, another park nearby. Visible in the background at Tabiat Bridge was a skyscraper that had been damaged in Israeli strikes last year, still shorn of some of its glass paneling.

People prepared chicken kebabs on small grills, posed for pictures, and kicked around soccer balls. It was a brief moment of normalcy in the midst of an unrelentingly difficult few months.

Since the war began, many Tehran residents had left the capital for refuge elsewhere in the country. Coffee shops have been empty in recent days. But several Iranians said that Thursday was the busiest they had seen Tehran in weeks.

Russia, China and France on Thursday effectively stymied a push by Arab countries to get the United Nations Security Council to authorize military action against Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying they opposed any language authorizing force, according to a diplomat and a senior U.N. official.

The actual vote on the resolution, which was drafted by Bahrain with the support of the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, is expected to be scheduled for Friday. But it remained unclear whether extra hours of diplomacy would bring the three veto-holding countries on board.

Russia, China and France are among the five permanent members of the council with veto power. There were also divisions over the resolution among the 10 nonpermanent members, according to diplomats.

The current draft resolution is in its fourth revision after weeks of closed-door negotiations. The part of the text that has generated an impasse states that the Security Council “authorizes member States, acting nationally or through voluntary multinational naval partnerships, with advance notifications to the Security Council,” to use all necessary means “to secure transit passage and to deter attempts to close, obstruct or otherwise interfere with international through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic choke point where a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally travels, shortly after the United States and Israel launched a war against it on Feb. 28. The closure has caused global energy disruption, hurt financial markets and increased the costs of oil, shipping and insurance. Iran has also launched thousands of retaliatory attacks on the Arab nations in the Persian Gulf — which host major American bases — killing at least 18 civilians and severely damaging military and energy infrastructure.

Bahrain’s foreign minister, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, told a session of the Security Council on Thursday that “Iran’s aggressive intentions” toward its Arab neighbors were “treacherous” and “preplanned,” and violated international law. He said Iran had targeted civilian structures such as airports, water stations, seaports and hotels.

Iran signaled on Thursday that it intended to continue to oversee shipping traffic through the critical Strait of Hormuz, even after the war.

For Iran, its Arab neighbors uniting against it at the Security Council represented a serious, perhaps irreparable, deterioration of relations. For years, Iran cultivated closer ties with its neighbors, only to blow them up during the past month of war.

Analysts say the Bahraini-led efforts at the Council are more symbolic than pragmatic; the militaries of most of the Persian Gulf countries are relatively small, and heavily dependent on U.S. support. They have minimal experience combating a military the size of Iran’s.

And France’s president, Emanuel Macron, said on Thursday that President Trump’s urging countries that rely on the strait to forcefully open it were unrealistic.

“It is unrealistic because it would take an inordinate amount of time and would expose anyone crossing the strait to coastal threats from the Revolutionary Guards, who possess significant resources, as well as ballistic missiles, a host of other risks,” Mr. Macron said.

Abdulaziz Sager, the chairman of the Gulf Research Center, a think tank based in Saudi Arabia, said any cease-fire agreement must also address Iran’s capability to attack Gulf countries and control maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. “We will not forget what they have done to us, and they will not forget that the U.S. had a lot of facilities here in the Gulf,” he said.

The blocking of the strait has cut off the main export route for the Arab countries, where economies and government budgets depend heavily on fossil fuel revenue. Qatar, one of the world’s largest exporters of natural gas, has been forced to shut down production entirely and declare force majeure, breaking contracts with buyers.

The Qatari government said it expects a $20 billion loss in annual revenue. Most of the Gulf countries had maintained cordial ties with Iran before the war, including Saudi Arabia, which re-established diplomatic relations with Iran in a China-brokered pact in 2023.

Saudi and Emirati officials in particular had come to believe that the best way to manage the threat posed to them by Iran was through nurturing diplomacy and shared economic interests, analysts say.

Bahrain was an exception. An island nation where a Sunni monarchy rules over a Shiite-majority citizenry, Bahrain has long had an antagonistic relationship with Iran, accusing it of meddling in its internal affairs and stirring up dissent.

But in the wake of the war, even countries like Qatar and Oman — which often served as a mediators between the United States and Iran — have indicated that their relationships with the Islamic republic are probably irreparably damaged. They have handed the mediator role to Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt.

Ali Vaez, the Iran director at the International Crisis Group, said the resolution by Bahrain was flawed and risked escalating tensions in the region, pointing out that the closure of the strait is a result of the war and it was open before the strikes. “It treats a political crisis as if it can be solved at gunpoint.”

Iran signaled on Thursday that it intended to continue to oversee shipping traffic through the critical Strait of Hormuz, even after the war, though it insisted that it would not restrict transit.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said that Iran was drafting a protocol that would allow Iran and Oman to “oversee transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” in reported by Iran’s state news outlet.

But Gharibabadi said that such oversight “will naturally not mean restrictions; rather, they are intended to facilitate and ensure safe passage and to provide better services to ships passing through this route.”

The U.S. government insists that Iran has no legal right to exercise any control of the strait, which has generally been treated as an international waterway. But during the war, Iran has repeatedly ratcheted up its claims of authority there; it has recently made plans to charge tolls to passing ships .

At its narrowest, the passage is just 24 miles wide, from the northernmost point of Oman to the nearest Iranian land. That means the narrowest point of the strait lies entirely within the territorial waters of the two countries.

But under international law, the strait is open to unimpeded international shipping. That status was codified decades ago by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and it is considered binding, though Iran has not ratified the convention and has disputed its reach.

Since the start of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign, Iran has blocked most traffic through the strait on its southern coast, which has driven up fuel prices across the world. It has said that only the ships of friendly nations may pass, and only with Iranian permission, and it has made threats against those who would defy the blockade. Some ships have been attacked in strikes that other nations have blamed on Iran.

Some countries, such as Malaysia and the Philippines , have said in recent days that Iran has promised to allow their vessels through, and Iran has allowed some Chinese ships to transit the strait. Officials from the United States, Europe and parts of Asia have discussed having warships escort commercial shipping through the strait, a big commitment of resources, but they have not agreed on any arrangements.

Military planners from nations around the globe will meet week to securing the Strait of Hormuz for shipping, the British government said on Thursday, underscoring the importance of safeguarding the key maritime route.

Word of the talks came a day after President Trump called on other countries to “build up some delayed courage” and reopen the waterway, which serves as a passage for roughly a fifth of the world’s oil deliveries.

But it remains unclear clear whether the discussions, scheduled for week in northwest London, would satisfy Mr. Trump’s demand for greater involvement by other countries in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain has insisted that Britain will not be drawn into the conflict, and his foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, emphasized on Thursday that any military deployment would only follow the end of hostilities.

“We need the diplomatic pressure, the economic pressure and also the work that is being done separately by military planners on how to keep shipping safe for the long term when the conflict concludes,” Ms. Cooper said.

She made the remarks after a virtual meeting of ministers from 41 nations to a political and diplomatic response to the war. Participating countries included France, Germany, Italy, Canada and some Gulf nations, but the United States was not among them.

Since the war began, Iran has targeted several vessels in response to American and Israeli strikes, choking off traffic in the strait and sending global energy prices skyrocketing. Ms. Cooper said that during the past 24 hours, 25 vessels had navigated the Strait of Hormuz, which would normally be used by 150 ships a day, and that 2,000 ships with around 20,000 seafarers were stranded nearby. She said the closure of the strait was threatening “our global economic security.”

Britain’s defense ministry said the military planners at the meeting week would “viable options to make the Strait of Hormuz accessible and safe for ,” but it did not elaborate. Planners from many of the countries are expected to join the meeting remotely.

While resisting direct involvement in the war, Britain and France are seeking to coordinate an international intervention after it ends.

Guillaume Vernet, a French military spokesman, told a news conference on ​Thursday that the process would be multi-phased, with a focus on reassuring shipowners to allow their vessels into the area, and on lowering insurance premiums, Reuters reported .

There would also eventually need to be coordination ​with Iran to ensure there are security guarantees for ships, he said, adding that it was unlikely ​for now.

“We will need to assemble a sufficient number of vessels and have coordination capabilities in the air, at sea, as well as the ability to intelligence,” Mr. Vernet added.

Many governments from Thursday’s talks released a joint statement last month demanding that Iran cease its “threats, laying of mines, drone and missile attacks and other attempts to block the Strait to commercial shipping.” Signatories included Germany, France and other European Union countries, as well as Japan, Canada, Australia and some Gulf states.

On Thursday, the focus was on achieving consensus on the principle of freedom of and on applying maximum diplomatic pressure on Iran, including from China and from countries in the global south affected by rising fertilizer prices.

“China can use its influence constructively on Iran: for a negotiated solution and cessation of hostilities against the Gulf states,” the German foreign ministry wrote on social media .

Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, who took part in Thursday’s meeting, said it was important to work through the United Nations “not only to ensure freedom of in the Strait, but also to create a ‘humanitarian corridor’ for fertilizers and to avoid a new food crisis, starting with African countries.” The priorities were to safeguard freedom of and to protect the stability of energy markets, he added.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said NATO and Europe, including Britain, have done little to support the U.S.-Israeli operation in Iran. Mr. Starmer initially refused to let the American military use British bases to strike Iran, although he reversed that position after Iranian retaliation began.