As the US-Israel war on Iran approaches its 100th day, few states illustrate the conflict’s regional spillover more sharply than Kuwait. Geographically wedged between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and hosting some of the largest concentrations of US military personnel in the Gulf, the small emirate has become an unwilling frontline in a war it neither sought nor declared.
Since Iran launched retaliatory strikes across the Gulf on February 28, following the US-Israeli opening salvo that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Kuwait has absorbed repeated barrages. Iranian drones struck Kuwait International Airport and the Ali Al Salem Air Base, which houses Italian forces, while another drone hit the US garrison at Camp Buehring in the country’s northeast. A separate missile attack targeted a makeshift operations center near the civilian port of Shuaiba, killing six US soldiers and wounding dozens. 
The human toll for Kuwait itself has been significant. In the strikes against the country, four soldiers and six civilians were killed, while 77 soldiers and 38 civilians were injured.  Kuwaiti air defenses, working alongside US, Italian and Canadian forces, claim to have shot down 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones. 
The economic dimension is equally alarming for a state whose revenue depends almost entirely on hydrocarbons. Iranian drone attacks on power and water desalination plants forced two power generation units offline, and a separate strike caused a fire at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex—home to the Oil Ministry and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation headquarters—prompting a full evacuation.  Iran has also struck Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, while the campaign has triggered a total suspension of commercial aviation in Kuwaiti airspace. 
Kuwait’s vulnerability stems from a structural dilemma. As a host to US bases, it is treated by Tehran as a legitimate target; Iran has explicitly said it targeted US bases in Kuwait in response to American attacks.  Yet Kuwait has no appetite for war with its neighbor, with whom it shares the giant offshore Dorra gas field and decades of cautious diplomacy. The emirate’s traditional posture—mediation and neutrality—has proven nearly impossible to sustain when American forces operate from its soil.
Recent weeks have brought no relief. Iran fired missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain in early June as tensions in the Gulf spiked amid a diplomatic impasse,  even as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers the war on Iran was effectively over. 
For Kuwait, the path forward is narrow. It cannot expel the US presence that makes it a target without abandoning its security guarantor, nor can it shield its civilians and oil infrastructure from a determined adversary next door. Caught between superpower allies and a wounded but defiant Iran, Kuwait embodies the predicament of the small Gulf state: too strategically located to stay out, too exposed to weather the storm safely.
Illustration: ChatGPT