DUBAI - Amid economic pressure and a fight to retain diplomatic leverage via control over the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is lashing out with increasingly bellicose rhetoric and, on Thursday, a strike on U.S. forces in Kuwait.
President Donald Trump has in recent days vacillated between pledging to "smack" Iran with strikes and suggesting that the United States could instead focus on cutting off Iran's economy and expanding traffic through the strait by protecting oil tankers willing to risk passage.
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Rather than capitulate, Iran is taking a more bullish stance, as it has in pivotal moments throughout the conflict. Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said on Thursday that "America's new crimes against the Iranian nation have changed our security equations and defense doctrine."
Iran's strategy, he said in a post on X, would now be "asymmetrical," and he warned: "The Americans should start thinking about stockpiling gasoline and fuel; dark months await the American economy."
Iran's drone and missile attack on Kuwait on Thursday appeared to follow that approach, analysts said, breaking the tit-for-tat pattern involving Iranian strikes on ships in the Strait of Hormuz prompting U.S. attacks on Iran, followed by Iranian strikes on U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf.
Thursday's attack was the latest in a string of airstrikes in the region since Sunday, when combat between Iran and the U.S. restarted after a month-long lull.
The Trump administration appears to see that "momentum is on their side" because of the increases in traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and the impact of the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports, said Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group, a think tank. Iran's leaders may dispute the specifics, he said, but recognize the risks to their leverage and want to "show they still have cards to play."
"They want to show that they are not risk-averse or deterred," he said. "And that they are going to try and impose their own costs on the U.S."
Those include damage to U.S. allies in the Gulf, U.S. bases in the region and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Ali Vaez, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, said Iran is "willing to take bigger and bigger risks to break the blockade."
"In a way, the more that President Trump succeeds in putting economic pressure on Iran, the more he fails by compelling Iranians to resort to force," he said.
In the latest round of attacks, Iran has avoided striking Israel, where some officials have in recent days also stepped up their rhetoric. Doing so, Vaez said, would "increase the cost but not the benefit to Iran, whose main goal is to increase energy prices by going after regional countries."
Doron Spielman, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told The Washington Post that the blockade on Iran has been "incredibly effective."
"At the end of the day, Iran respects or responds only to one thing, which is strength," he said. "And when they threaten the Strait of Hormuz, when they threaten U.S. vessels, striking them is putting the ball back in their court and saying we're not going to be messed with."
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, a hard-line member of Israel's ruling party, said Thursday that officials are seeing signs that indicate Iran might be driven "to desperate measures" because of "the heavy economic pressure they are under, along with the fear of an uprising and the fall of the regime."
Katz, speaking Thursday at an event at the Ministry of Defense, warned that if Iran attacks Israel, it would "free Israel from any existing restrictions in attacking Iran. … We will strike all national military and civilian infrastructure in Iran - including energy infrastructure - and return Iran deep into the Stone Age and darkness."
The Kuwaiti military did not say whether there were any injuries or deaths in the Thursday strikes, which analysts said highlighted the vulnerability of Persian Gulf nations in this moment.
"This is extremely concerning and even existential for Gulf states," said Dania Thafer, executive director of Gulf International Forum, a Washington think tank.
Thafer noted that nations such as Qatar and Kuwait, which do not have land borders that allow them to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, are especially vulnerable - even if Trump fully transitions to economic rather than military warfare.
"Trump is in a corner, and Iran wants to pressure him - especially before the elections," she said. "Unfortunately, it is Gulf nations that are on the front lines."
The recent escalation began Sunday, when the U.S. Central Command announced it had hit Iranian launchers that it said were preparing to fire rockets into the Strait of Hormuz.
In retaliation, Iran fired at U.S. forces in Jordan, and President Donald Trump said the U.S. would hit Iran "hard." U.S. forces then launched a wave of attacks in southern Iran, which it said targeted air defense sites, radars, equipment used to distribute mines and other systems.
The strikes also killed civilians at a wedding, according to Iranian officials. On Wednesday, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations sent it a letter condemning the attack as a war crime and calling for an investigation. At least 94 people had been wounded and six killed in the attack, Iran's deputy health minister, Ali Jafarian, told The Washington Post. He described the attack as a war crime.
Iran's parliamentary speaker and top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, spoke with Hamas official Basem Naim on Wednesday, stating that Iran and allied groups are united against U.S. "arrogance," according to Iranian state media reports.
Ghalibaf said that Iran had insisted that conflicts on ending conflicting involving its allies across the region - including those with the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon - its proxies as a condition of negotiations with the United States, and said that Iran would only reopen the Strait of Hormuz only if Washington could fully commit to the terms of the memorandum to which the sides agreed in June.
"Today, even the pro-American governments in the region admit that America is the cause of insecurity in the region," he said, according to Iranian state media.