Ahmed Kamel – Egypt Daily News
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched an attack on a U.S. military base in Bahrain, according to regional media reports, marking a further escalation in the widening conflict between Iran, the United States and Israel.
The strike was reportedly carried out in response to what Iranian officials described as a U.S. attack on a desalination plant inside Iran, according to reports carried by the French news agency Agence France-Presse and broadcast by the Egyptian network Al Qahera News.
Shortly after the reported strike, authorities in Bahrain confirmed damage in the capital Manama, where a fire broke out following the attack.
In a brief statement, Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said Iranian strikes caused a blaze and material damage to a residential building and surrounding structures in the capital. Civil defense teams were dispatched to control the fire and assess the damage.
Bahrain is among several Gulf countries that have come under Iranian attacks in recent days, which Tehran says are aimed at U.S. military facilities across the region rather than at the host nations themselves.
The escalation came despite earlier comments by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian indicating that Tehran was willing to halt attacks against neighboring states.
In a televised address on Saturday, Pezeshkian apologized to countries in the region that had been affected by Iranian strikes over the past several days. He said Iran’s temporary leadership council had agreed to suspend attacks against neighboring states provided that their territories were not used as launching points for military operations against Iran.
“I apologize to neighboring countries. We have no hostility toward them,” Pezeshkian said. “We must work with neighboring states to ensure security and peace.”
The Iranian president added that Iran’s armed forces had acted independently in some cases following the killing of several senior leaders, including the country’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in earlier U.S. and Israeli strikes.
“In light of losing our leaders and our commander because of brutal aggression, our armed forces acted independently,” he said.
Expanding regional confrontation
The confrontation began last week when the United States and Israel launched a large-scale military campaign targeting Iranian military and strategic sites, a series of strikes that Iranian authorities say killed hundreds of people including senior security officials.
Tehran has responded by launching waves of missiles and drones toward Israel and what it describes as American military targets in several countries hosting U.S. forces across the Middle East.
Some of those attacks have caused civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure, raising fears that the conflict could expand into a broader regional war.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported that a new wave of Iranian missiles and drones had been launched toward Bahrain and Qatar as part of the ongoing retaliation campaign.
Qatar’s Interior Ministry later said the immediate security threat had ended and that the situation in the country had returned to normal. In a statement carried by the Qatar News Agency, authorities urged residents to follow official instructions and avoid spreading unverified information.
The latest attacks underscore growing instability across the Gulf region as Iran continues to respond to the joint U.S.-Israeli offensive, raising concerns among regional governments about the possibility of further strikes against countries hosting American military bases.
