Oil Strikes $100 as Iran’s Drone Barrage Hits Five Gulf Nations at Once

In an extraordinary display of military reach, Iran launched simultaneous drone and missile strikes against five Gulf nations over the weekend, hitting Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait in a single coordinated barrage that sent global oil prices soaring above $100 per barrel.
The attacks came in direct response to Israeli strikes on oil storage facilities near Tehran, which killed four workers and blanketed the Iranian capital in black smoke. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned that the campaign against Gulf states would continue unless those countries used their influence to halt Israeli and American attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure.
Saudi Arabia’s air defenses shot down 15 drones, while Bahrain’s desalination plant took a direct hit. Two people were killed and 12 injured when a projectile struck a residential area in the Saudi city of Al-Kharj. A US service member died from injuries sustained in an Iranian attack on American forces in Saudi Arabia, the seventh American killed in the conflict.
Iran’s leadership simultaneously underwent a momentous transition. The clerical assembly selected Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader, appointing the son of the late Ali Khamenei in a move that broke with precedent and drew widespread international criticism.
The United States sought to limit the economic fallout, pledging not to target Iranian energy assets and expressing confidence that supply disruptions would be short-lived. But with five countries struck in a single weekend and oil prices already at their highest level in years, the situation on the ground was telling a very different story.