# SITREP: 2026-07-24 (Day 147) Lead: BAHRAIN AND KUWAIT WENT TO WAR WITH IRAN. NOBODY ANNOUNCED IT. Compiled by a language model from that day's archived articles; analysis, not archive record. Page: https://iranwar.liminallayers.com/bulletins/sitrep-2026-07-24/ Licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/); sources remain their publishers'. ## OVERVIEW The Gulf's quiet middle has shattered. Bahrain and Kuwait secretly launched airstrikes inside Iran earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, marking the first direct military retaliation by small Gulf states against Tehran. Iran rejected a ceasefire proposal delivered by Iraq's prime minister while continuing its 14th consecutive day of strikes on US bases, and Oman arrived in Tehran to negotiate Hormuz access. Brent crude has pulled back from Thursday's $100 spike to $96, but the structural picture just got materially more complicated: the war now has more active state combatants than it did 24 hours ago. ## Lead story: BAHRAIN AND KUWAIT WENT TO WAR WITH IRAN. NOBODY ANNOUNCED IT. This is the story of Day 147, and its significance is easy to understate. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Bahrain and Kuwait secretly sent fighter jets to strike drone and missile storage facilities inside Iran earlier this month [1]. Both countries have been absorbing Iranian fire for weeks, watching their US bases repeatedly attacked and their civilians put on blast-siren alert. They decided, without public announcement, to hit back. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) provided intelligence on the targets and flew defensive air cover for the strikes [1]. That is not logistical support. That is the UAE co-authoring a military operation against Iran while officially saying nothing about it. The Journal also noted that Saudi Arabia joined the UAE in striking Iran at an earlier stage of the war but is now reassessing its position [1]. That reassessment almost certainly connects to what the Times of Israel reported separately: a quiet Iran-Saudi non-aggression arrangement brokered by Pakistani army chief Asim Munir, leveraging a personal oil-transport venture between Munir and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief Ahmad Vahidi [14]. Iran fired one missile at Saudi Arabia over the weekend after three months of restraint. Munir warned Vahidi it jeopardised their joint business. No further Saudi strikes have followed [14]. The implication being that Iran has been selling exemptions from its own war, and the price is paid in oil deals and quiet cash rather than formal diplomacy. What the Bahrain and Kuwait strikes actually mean is this: the map of active combatants in this war just expanded. Two small Gulf states with limited air forces, flying US and European aircraft, decided the cost of absorbing Iranian strikes indefinitely exceeded the risk of direct retaliation. That is a significant threshold to cross. It also means Iran is now absorbing strikes from multiple directions, some of which it cannot publicly acknowledge without admitting its attacks on Gulf civilian and military infrastructure are generating real military consequences. The UAE's coordination role matters separately. Abu Dhabi has been accused of buying Iranian restraint with frozen funds, which it denies [14]. It also just helped Bahrain and Kuwait bomb Iran. Both things may be true simultaneously. That is the Gulf's version of keeping all doors open, and it tells you how much uncertainty every capital in the region is managing right now. What comes next is the piece to watch. Iran now knows, or suspects, that Bahrain and Kuwait hit it. Whether it retaliates directly against those states, or absorbs the strikes and maintains its current focus on US military targets, will define the next phase of Gulf involvement in this war. ## ALSO NOTABLE - **Iran formally rejected the US ceasefire proposal, but the picture is messier than either side is letting on.** The New York Times reported Tehran rejected a deal delivered by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. Iraq disputed the report [3]. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers' meeting in Kyrgyzstan, said there would be no temporary truce "unless our demands regarding the Strait of Hormuz are fulfilled" [5]. What that actually means is that Iran will not accept a ceasefire that leaves Hormuz's legal status unresolved, which is also Washington's red line in the other direction. The gap is not bridgeable with creative language. It is structural. - **The IRGC completed its destruction of Amazon Web Services infrastructure in Bahrain**, claiming the 27th wave of Operation Nasr-2 destroyed the remaining structure of a data facility it describes as supporting US military intelligence processing [8]. Iran first struck the facility on July 21. Whether it materially degraded actual Pentagon operations is unconfirmed. What matters is the targeting logic: Iran has now run a two-strike campaign against the same commercial cloud infrastructure, treating it as a legitimate military objective. AWS operates critical infrastructure for governments and militaries worldwide, and Iran has now established a precedent of hitting it twice. - **Oman arrived in Tehran to negotiate Hormuz, which tells you something important.** A formal Omani delegation flew to Tehran late Friday for talks on managing shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz [2]. Oman holds a geographic veto at the strait's exit and has stayed diplomatically useful to both sides throughout the war. The US and Gulf states have rejected any Iran-managed navigation framework for Hormuz, but Oman's foreign minister publicly said "vital waterways must remain open" [2], which is closer to Iran's framing than Washington's. This visit will not produce a deal this weekend. But Oman does not make trips like this for show. - **Gulf states have borrowed a record $112 billion this year to build Hormuz bypass infrastructure**, according to Bloomberg data cited by The Cradle [6]. Saudi Arabia is expanding its East-West Pipeline to Yanbu. The UAE is building two deepwater terminals at Fujairah, outside the strait. Kuwait sold $6 billion in bonds this week with strong demand despite its oil exports being halted and its bases under regular Iranian fire [6]. Investors are betting these states survive the war. The structural read here: the Gulf is spending generational money on the assumption that Hormuz remains contested or closed indefinitely, which is a more pessimistic long-term view than anything any government is saying publicly. - **Iran's improving missile accuracy is now a documented problem, not a hypothesis.** The Guardian published a detailed account Friday of how Iranian missiles are hitting US bases with greater precision, drawing on Chinese satellite imagery from companies the US sanctioned in May, Russian-derived swarming tactics from Ukraine, and navigation systems combining GPS with China's BeiDou satellite network [4]. Three US soldiers were killed last Friday when an Iranian strike defeated a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system at Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti airbase. The Pentagon investigation into that failure is ongoing [4]. The 70% survival estimate for Iran's ballistic missile programme, on US intelligence figures, combined with this accuracy improvement, is the strategic problem that no volume of US strikes has resolved so far. ## MARKETS & MONEY The Brent pullback from Thursday's $100.60 to $96.42 today looks like relief, but the Oil Volatility Index (OVX) at 67.29 is still elevated and the one-month move from $73 to $96 is the story [[Market snapshot]]. Markets are not pricing a resolution. They repriced Thursday on the Houthi tanker strikes and have partially digested that shock today. The gold-to-oil ratio at 45.48 remains compressed compared to a month ago at 57.48, meaning oil is still outpacing the fear trade. Defence stocks continued their climb: Lockheed Martin at $580.90, Raytheon at $212.40, Rheinmetall above $1,037 [[Market snapshot]]. European equities (DAX up 1.4% on the week, FTSE steady) are not panicking. The message from markets today is: the war is bad, priced in as bad, and not yet priced as catastrophic. The Bahrain-Kuwait strike revelation has not fully landed in commodity markets yet. If Iran responds to those strikes directly, watch OVX as the first signal. ## WESTERN IMPACTS The Pentagon's casualty number problem is now a formal political scandal. The Defense Department quietly lowered its reported US troop death count from 18 to 14 on its website, offering two contradictory explanations: one that four deaths were removed because they occurred after Trump declared an April ceasefire, and one blaming "temporary data disruptions" [10]. Trump himself kept citing 18 at a press briefing, apparently unaware his own department had changed the number [10]. The Pentagon confirmed to the New York Times that casualties since July 7 have risen to nearly 100, almost all of them injuries it is not legally required to disclose [10]. Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges put it plainly: "The administration seems to have a real hard time being honest about what is going on, not just about casualties, but about the whole war in general." [10] The domestic political math is worsening fast. A Fox News poll published Friday found 56% of Americans now oppose military action against Iran, with 66% disapproving of Trump's handling of the war, his worst mark yet [13]. Among non-MAGA Republicans, support for Trump has fallen 13 points since June to 51% [13]. The House passed a war powers resolution 214 to 208 on Thursday, and the Senate rejected a parallel resolution 47 to 49 [15]. Neither vote has legal force, but both are happening in a midterm election year, and the Fox poll was not conducted by a left-leaning outlet. ## WHAT TO WATCH 1. **Iran's response to the Bahrain and Kuwait strikes.** Tehran now knows, or will shortly know, that two additional Gulf states hit it directly. Does it retaliate against Bahraini or Kuwaiti targets specifically, or absorb the strikes and maintain focus on US military assets? Any Iranian strike explicitly framed as retaliation against Bahrain or Kuwait as states, rather than as US proxy targets, would mark a significant escalation in the war's geographic scope. 2. **The Oman-Iran Hormuz talks.** No details of what is being discussed have been released [2]. Oman does not conduct diplomatic theatre. Watch for any joint statement, even a vague one about "technical mechanisms," as a potential signal that a navigation framework is being quietly constructed outside the US-Iran deadlock. If something emerges from these talks in the next 48-72 hours, it matters enormously for oil markets and for whether the Memorandum of Understanding framework can be revived in any form. 3. **Whether the Saudi nuclear deal chaos resolves or deepens.** Trump retroactively added an Abraham Accords condition to a deal his own Energy Secretary had just publicly signed, apparently without telling him [12]. Saudi Arabia has not publicly accepted or rejected the new condition. The deal's status is genuinely unclear, and a US-Saudi nuclear arrangement collapsing publicly, mid-war, with Riyadh already being courted by Pakistan and quietly managing its own Iran arrangement, would be a significant diplomatic blow. Watch for a Saudi foreign ministry statement or a White House clarification in the next few days. ## References 1. [JPO] The Jerusalem Post: Bahrain, Kuwait secretly sent fighter jets to strike Iran earlier this month - report 2. [AJE] Al Jazeera: Oman talking with Tehran on Hormuz as US and Iran continue strikes 3. [GDN] The Guardian — Middle East: US expands Iran attacks as Trump warns Tehran and Houthis over Red Sea strikes 4. [GDN] The Guardian — Middle East: How Chinese tech and Russian tactics are aiding Iran’s bombing of US bases 5. [AAM] Anadolu Agency — Middle East: Iran rejects temporary ceasefire until Strait of Hormuz demands met 6. [CRD] The Cradle: Persian Gulf states pile on debt to build 'zero Hormuz' infrastructure 7. [CRD] The Cradle: SCO foreign ministers gather in Kyrgyzstan ahead of heads of state summit 8. [TSN] Tasnim News Agency: IRGC Annihilates Remaining Amazon Facility in New Strike 9. [CNN] CNN: US has hit Iran with nearly 2 weeks of daily strikes; Trump signals he’s not yet ready to negotiate 10. [AAM] Anadolu Agency — Middle East: Pentagon suddenly lowers reported US troop death toll from Iran war: New York Times 11. [YNT] Ynetnews: US strikes Iran again as Tehran rejects ceasefire proposal and warns of attack on Tel Aviv 12. [CNN] CNN: How Trump upended the Saudi nuclear deal less than 24 hours after its signing 13. [FOX] Fox News: Fox News Poll: Voters oppose the Iran war, see prolonged commitment 14. [TOI] The Times of Israel: Pakistan army chief leveraged private oil venture with IRGC head to shield Saudi Arabia 15. [APW] Associated Press: House again passes resolution seeking to halt military action in Iran