Iran Hits US Bases in Kuwait and UAE Again as Trump Publicly Corrects Commerce Secretary on War Deaths

Since a US strike on Iran's Larak Island on Sunday ended a roughly month-long lull, the fighting between Washington and Tehran has escalated fast. By Thursday, Iran was hitting the same targets for a second straight day.

Iran's army confirmed it carried out missile and drone strikes early Thursday on Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait and Al Minhad Air Base in the UAE, according to Anadolu Agency. The military called it the 31st phase of its Operation Saeqeh and said it struck satellite communications systems, equipment warehouses, fighter jet hangars and radar systems. Kuwait's Foreign Ministry called the attack a "flagrant violation" of its sovereignty, per Anadolu.

Kuwait's army said air defenses intercepted the incoming fire and told residents that any explosions they heard were interceptions, not impacts, according to CNBC and the Jerusalem Post. Neither Kuwait nor the United States has confirmed Iranian state broadcaster IRIB's claim that smoke was seen rising from a struck base.

A senior US official told Fox News that all American personnel are accounted for and there has been no major damage to any US base in the region, with most of Iran's missiles and drones intercepted before reaching Jordan. Iranian state media has claimed far heavier results, including hangars destroyed and casualties among US pilots and maintenance crews at bases in Jordan and Iraq's Kurdistan region. Two US officials disputed those claims on the record, according to Breitbart.

Casualty count keeps shifting

Iran's Tasnim News agency said Thursday that at least six Iranian service members, including three pilots, were killed in Tuesday's US strikes, according to CBS News. It's not clear whether those six are part of the 18 deaths Iran's health ministry announced Wednesday night: four civilians at a wedding in Hormozgan province, four IRGC Aerospace Force members, two navy personnel and one member of the Basij militia.

On the American side, the numbers have moved too. CBS News reported that the Pentagon's public casualty page listed 18 US troops killed in the broader campaign against Iran as of July, split between four in Jordan and Iraq and 14 in the operation formerly called Epic Fury. Those four Jordan/Iraq names were later removed from the Iran-war tally, dropping the official Pentagon count to 14. No source in this reporting explains the removal, and the Defense Department hasn't offered a public accounting of why the number changed.

That confusion collided with politics Thursday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Wednesday that "there haven't been American deaths" in the war, calling it "an economic choke-out." Trump posted Thursday that Lutnick "had Venezuela on his mind" and wrote, "18 people were killed in Iran!" appearing to correct the record on Iranian, not American, deaths, even as his own military's casualty list for US troops has bounced between 14 and 18.

Baghdad, Hormuz and the "war crime" claim

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei called the wedding strike in Sirik a "war crime," saying it exposed "America's desperate struggle to conceal its failure," per Breitbart. CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said the US is "looking into" the reports, which originated from Iranian state media, and said "the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC." Neither side's account has been independently verified in these sources.

Yemen's Houthis, aligned with Iran, said Tehran has the right to retaliate against the US, according to Fox News. G20 finance ministers meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, called for "free, safe and predictable" navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. China declined to fully endorse that statement, per Fox News.

Brent crude traded above $97 a barrel Thursday morning, its highest point in a week of steady gains since hostilities resumed, according to CBS News. Bond yields eased and stock markets traded steadier after recent volatility, even as Trump told reporters Wednesday he doesn't think the war will "be very much longer" and that the US is ready for more strikes "any time we want."

The political undertow

A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll of 1,000 respondents in August found more than two-thirds disapprove of Trump's handling of the war, with nearly as many disapproving of his job performance overall, CNBC reported. Reuters, citing four people familiar with internal discussions, reported that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are pushing to keep the conflict "quiet" until after November's midterms to limit Republican losses.

Trump said at a Rose Garden event that the GOP "respects the fact that we're not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon," insisting the campaign is meant to help Israel, the Middle East and the United States. Whether voters agree, and whether the Pentagon ever squares its own casualty numbers, remain open questions as the strikes on Kuwait and the UAE keep coming.