UAE strikes desalination facility in Iran, marking Gulf state’s first offensive move of war

The UAE Defense Ministry also announced on Sunday that the death toll from Iran’s attacks had risen to four.

The United Arab Emirates was said to have struck an Iranian desalination facility on Sunday, in its first retaliatory attack to Iranian drone and missile fire as part of Israel and the US’s war on the Islamic regime, a source familiar with the details confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.

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The reported strike marked UAE’s first reported offensive participation in the war, and joins a similar report from last week, in which senior western diplomatic source told The Post that Qatar carried out strikes inside Iran over the past 24 hours in retaliation to recent Iranian drone and missile attacks.

Abu Dhabi had reportedly contemplated whether it should react after it, along with a host of Gulf nations, was attacked by Iran since Israel and the US launched strikes on February 28. Last week, authorities in the United Arab Emirate of Fujairah extinguished a fire caused by debris after interception of a drone by air defenses in the Fujrairah oil industry zone.

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A Wall Street Journal report from Friday said that the UAE is considering freezing billions of dollars worth of assets belonging to Iran, a move which would cripple the country’s connection to the global economy.

Later on Sunday, the UAE Defense Ministry also announced that the death toll from Iran’s attacks had risen to four.
Along with the UAE, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain reported Iranian drone attacks in their countries on Saturday and early Sunday, with a huge fire engulfing a government office block in Kuwait.

Kuwait’s interior ministry said two of its officers were killed “while performing duties.”

In an apparent attempt to cool anger across the Gulf, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized to neighboring states for its attacks on US bases in those countries on Saturday.

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