Could Iran invade Kuwait? New threats raise fears of wider Middle East war

What began as an escalation centered on direct US-Iran military exchanges and the strategic struggle over the Strait of Hormuz is now generating pressure across a much wider geographical space. Gulf states have faced attacks and threats against critical infrastructure. The possibility of US operations against Iranian territory has expanded beyond air strikes to discussions surrounding Kharg Island and potential cooperation with Kurdish and other anti-regime forces. Iranian warnings have, in turn, raised the possibility of retaliation extending to Kuwait and potentially Bahrain.

Meanwhile, the Houthis have added another layer of instability around Bab-el-Mandeb by targeting Saudi-linked shipping, placing pressure on one of the principal maritime alternatives available to Riyadh as the crisis around Hormuz continues.

Israel, which has remained outside the latest phase of the direct US-Iran confrontation, is also watching events closely. The reopening of public shelters in several municipalities on Thursday does not indicate that an Iranian attack is imminent, but it does reflect concern that a further escalation between Washington and Tehran could once again bring Israel directly into the conflict.

Taken together, these developments do not yet demonstrate that a regional ground war is imminent. But they raise a consequential question: whether the growing number of military options now being discussed could eventually create an escalation that neither Washington nor Tehran initially intended.

The distinction is important because a conventional US invasion of Iran, a limited seizure of an island such as Kharg, a special-forces operation and a campaign relying on Kurdish or other local forces would each represent fundamentally different forms of military intervention.

John Keith King, founder of Q Advisory, cautioned against interpreting the existence of such options as evidence that the White House has already decided to open a ground front.

For King, the operational indicators required for a substantial ground operation have not yet been publicly demonstrated.

“I have not seen publicly verifiable evidence of the integrated command arrangements, protected staging areas, sustained logistics and US air-support commitments that would indicate an imminent operation,” he said. In his view, a Kurdish ground component would be more plausible than a conventional American invasion, but that would still require extensive US support, he added.

The distinction between planning and execution remains central to understanding the current phase of the war.

Large militaries routinely prepare multiple scenarios. But once one side begins to believe that contingency planning reflects a decision to pursue regime destruction or territorial occupation, the political meaning of military preparations can change rapidly.

From Tehran’s perspective, that danger is particularly significant. Mohammed Ali Ghanamizadeh Fallahi, a Middle East researcher based in Tehran, argued that the pattern of American strikes in southern Iran should already be viewed within the context of possible preparations for a wider operation.

His interpretation of American intentions is an assessment rather than an independently established US strategy. But it highlights one of the central risks of the current confrontation: Washington may consider its actions part of a coercive military campaign, while Tehran increasingly interprets the same actions as possible preparations for a much broader attack.

Ghanamizadeh Fallahi also questioned whether a southern ground operation would be strategically sustainable. “The plan to attack through southern Iran is not very wise or practical, because American equipment is not suitable for the climate of the Iranian islands,” he said, adding that other forces of the resistance axis may also be able to cut off American forces.

He argued that the history of previous ground wars fought by the US would also weigh heavily on any decision to move beyond air and maritime operations, especially against an opponent with significant experience in ground and guerrilla warfare, and remembering its own experiences from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. “This makes a ground attack against Iran difficult, even from different fronts, unless it inflames internal protests in Iran and disrupts Iranian national unity,” he said.

It is precisely that possibility—the combination of external military pressure and internal instability—that has made the Kurdish and ethnic-minority question increasingly relevant to speculation surrounding the next phase of the conflict.

Iran is not ethnically homogeneous, and several communities have longstanding political grievances with the central government. Kurdish armed organizations operating from northern Iraq have previously confronted Tehran, while Baluch areas in southeastern Iran have also experienced persistent instability.

A strategy based on such groups could theoretically allow Washington to create pressure inside Iran without immediately deploying large numbers of American ground forces. Yet such a strategy would carry risks that extend far beyond the battlefield.

King said Kurdish forces could provide Washington with several tactical opportunities.

“Washington might hope that Iranian Kurdish forces could divert the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, disrupt supply routes, collect intelligence, secure territory or encourage broader opposition to Tehran,” he said.

But tactical pressure and strategic success are not the same thing.

“The danger is that this could transform a conflict over Iran’s nuclear, missile and maritime behavior into an ethnic and territorial war,” King said. “Iranian nationalism could strengthen the government rather than weaken it, while Tehran could retaliate directly against Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey, Baghdad and neighboring states would also fear separatist spillover.”

In that scenario, an effort intended to weaken the Iranian state could instead strengthen nationalist support for Tehran while simultaneously creating new tensions across Iraq and Turkey. “Kurdish forces could create tactical pressure, but they are unlikely by themselves to produce controlled regime change or a stable postwar settlement,” King said.

Kobi Michael, an analyst and researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute, also believes Kurdish involvement could become relevant if the confrontation continues to expand.

“The Kurds might play a role, but it depends on the developments,” Michael said, noting that many Kurds are interested in achieving increased autonomy.

He also pointed to other minorities with unresolved grievances against Tehran, suggesting that a broader internal front could eventually emerge even without a single, centrally coordinated military operation.

But any attempt to introduce Kurdish armed groups into the confrontation would immediately affect relations with Turkey.

The Kurdish question remains one of Ankara’s most sensitive national-security concerns, particularly because any significant Kurdish territorial or political gains in Iran or Iraq could have implications for Turkey’s own Kurdish population.

Michael acknowledged that Turkish opposition would be substantial but argued that Ankara would not necessarily be able to prevent Kurdish groups from acting if they believed the regional conflict had created a historic opportunity.

Ghanamizadeh Fallahi presented a sharply different view from Tehran.

“They are counting on the Kurds inside Iran, but this is wrong,” he said. “The Kurds in Iran are not going to tie themselves to them.”, he added. He also suggested that Iran and Turkey could find overlapping interests in containing Kurdish separatist forces.

The disagreement reflects a larger uncertainty surrounding any strategy based on Iran’s internal divisions. Ethnic grievances exist, but that does not automatically translate into support for a foreign military intervention. Nor does opposition to Tehran necessarily imply a willingness to participate in a campaign that could fragment the country.

The possibility of a more limited US territorial operation, particularly against Kharg Island, presents a different strategic calculation.

Kharg is important because of its role in Iran’s oil-export system. Seizing or neutralizing the island could theoretically deprive Tehran of a major economic asset while giving Washington additional bargaining power.

But an operation that appears limited geographically could still produce region-wide consequences. “Seizing Kharg Island could deprive Tehran of its principal oil-export hub and give Washington a powerful bargaining asset,” King said. “It would not necessarily provide decisive leverage.”

The difficulty would not simply be capturing territory. “Capturing an island is different from holding it against missiles, drones, mines, small boats and attacks launched from the nearby Iranian coast,” King said. “Iran could damage or destroy its own facilities rather than permit the United States to operate them,” he asserted.

The strategic problem for Washington is therefore not only whether it could seize Kharg, but what would follow.

An island operation could create a new military commitment requiring constant protection while simultaneously giving Tehran justification to widen its retaliation against American forces and Gulf infrastructure. “Tehran could also retaliate against Gulf oil terminals, desalination facilities, ports, US bases and commercial shipping,” King said.

Such retaliation would place the Gulf states in an increasingly difficult position.

Many Gulf governments have spent years attempting to maintain security relationships with Washington while simultaneously preserving channels with Tehran. But as military operations increasingly affect civilian infrastructure, energy exports, and maritime routes, the space for strategic hedging becomes narrower.

The most extreme version of this dilemma emerged with Iranian warnings that a US ground operation could trigger an Iranian response involving Kuwait and potentially Bahrain. The feasibility of a conventional Iranian invasion remains deeply disputed.

Willian I., an advisor at the US Department of State, expressed skepticism about Iran’s ability to take Kuwait while acknowledging the broader uncertainty surrounding the conflict.

“Iran doesn't have the capacity to take Kuwait. … It's not impossible, but I don't think it's something that's going to happen right now,” he told The Media Line.

King similarly described a conventional Iranian occupation of Kuwait or Bahrain as militarily improbable. “Iran has no direct land border with Kuwait, meaning its forces would have to cross Iraqi territory or conduct a highly exposed amphibious operation,” he said. “Bahrain is an island hosting the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, making an Iranian occupation attempt even more difficult.”

But the distinction between occupation and a limited operation is crucial. Iran would not necessarily need to capture and hold an entire Gulf state to create a major strategic shock.

“Missile and drone attacks, sabotage, infiltrations, attacks by aligned groups or a limited raid intended to capture American personnel are considerably more plausible,” King said.

“If Tehran believed the survival of the state was at stake, it might accept extraordinary losses to attempt such an operation, but occupying either country would be beyond Iran’s realistic conventional capacity.”, he added.

Michael also considered a conventional invasion unlikely but warned that Tehran could become less predictable if it believed the regime itself faced an existential threat.

“They will do whatever they can do. They are not going to surrender, at least when it comes to this regime,” Michael said.

“Until the end, I don't see any surrender of this regime. And therefore, they will try even to use ground forces. But the probability that they will be succeeding in doing that is very low when it comes to Kuwait and to Bahrain,” he added.

For Michael, an operation conducted through Iraqi militias would also face significant obstacles.

“It’s not an idea that you push a button and then in three seconds you have the Iraqi militias in Kuwait,” he said. “It’s a logistical effort. It is something that takes time, something that creates a lot of noises for the intelligence to monitor it,”, he added.

A large militia mobilization would have to cross Iraqi territory, potentially encounter opposition from Baghdad and expose itself to extensive American and regional intelligence surveillance.

Yet the former Bahraini diplomat interviewed for this article, who requested that his identity and current affiliation remain undisclosed, argued that the danger should not be evaluated exclusively through the lens of conventional invasion.

“The main aim could be to seize US bases, capture hostages, or just conduct temporary operations and withdraw,” he told The Media Line, while stressing that he was not a military expert and could not assess whether Iran or its allies had the capacity to conduct such an operation.

His assessment points toward a broader characteristic of the conflict: limited actions can generate strategic consequences disproportionate to their military scale.

A raid on a military installation, the capture of American personnel or a temporary incursion into a Gulf state could force Washington to respond rapidly even if Tehran had no intention of permanently occupying territory.

King warned that the threshold for such a regional escalation could be crossed quickly.

A high-casualty strike, an attempted seizure of a US installation or a ground incursion could bring American retaliation within hours and place the broader Gulf security architecture under pressure.

Not every Gulf state would necessarily choose to join offensive operations, but as bases, intelligence facilities, air defenses and logistical networks across the Gulf became part of the conflict, remaining outside the war could become increasingly difficult.

For the former Bahraini diplomat, the deeper question is therefore whether the current confrontation could ultimately expose structural limits in the Gulf’s dependence on American deterrence.

“In my view, if the United States continues to escalate militarily but is unable to achieve a decisive strategic outcome against Iran and its allies through military operations alone, the Gulf states—including Bahrain—may eventually, and unfortunately, find themselves compelled to pursue a new regional security arrangement that accommodates Iran as an established stakeholder in the Gulf's security architecture,” he said.

“Such a development would not necessarily reflect a political preference, but rather a pragmatic adaptation to a changing regional balance of power,” he added.

For Washington, allowing Iran to maintain the ability to disrupt one of the world’s most strategically important maritime corridors carries both economic and geopolitical costs.

For Tehran, the ability to threaten Hormuz represents one of its most important instruments of leverage against a militarily superior opponent.

The former Bahraini diplomat argued that the conflict has already demonstrated how difficult it is for conventional military superiority to completely neutralize asymmetric pressure.

“Despite its overwhelming military superiority, the United States appears unable to guarantee complete and economically sustainable control over the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran has demonstrated that relatively low-cost asymmetric capabilities can repeatedly disrupt the Strait,” he said.

“In this sense, the Strait of Hormuz has effectively become a strategic weapon in its own right—a geopolitical asset whose ability to disrupt global energy markets rivals the strategic impact traditionally associated with far more sophisticated military capabilities,” he added.

Michael reached a similar conclusion regarding the strategic value Iran assigns to the waterway.

“The current regime will never give up on the control of Hormuz because this is the ultimate and maybe the only strategic leverage that they have over the US,” he said.

This creates what Michael described as a strategic impasse.

Washington cannot easily end its campaign while appearing to accept continued Iranian pressure over Hormuz. Tehran, meanwhile, has little incentive to surrender one of the few instruments capable of imposing substantial economic costs far beyond the immediate battlefield.

The Houthis’ attacks against Saudi-linked tankers around Bab-el-Mandeb carry particular significance because the Red Sea represents an essential alternative route for Saudi Arabia at a time of instability around the Persian Gulf.

If Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb come under simultaneous pressure, Riyadh faces a strategic problem that extends beyond individual attacks on ships.

The issue becomes whether alternative export routes can genuinely provide protection when multiple maritime chokepoints are exposed to different but interconnected conflicts.

Michael, however, cautioned against treating the Houthis as actors who simply execute Iranian orders.

“They are not a classical Iranian proxy,” he said. “It is true that they support the Iranians. It's true that they are willing and they are ready to be part of the resistance axis and to do some things that might help Iran. But they have their interests, they have their agenda, they have their aspirations,” he added.

The distinction is important.

A regional escalation does not require every actor to operate under a single command. Iran, the Houthis, Iraqi militias and other armed groups can pursue distinct interests while their actions simultaneously increase pressure on the same regional security architecture.

This makes de-escalation harder because resolving one confrontation does not necessarily neutralize the others.

Ghanamizadeh Fallahi also framed the current confrontation as part of a larger struggle over the future of the American role in the Middle East.

“You know, both Iran and the United States want the withdrawal of the US military presence from the Middle East, but the United States wants this withdrawal to end with the absorption of Iran into its new economic ecosystem,” he said.

“If the United States initiates a ground operation and fails, the Middle East will be over for Trump forever,” he added.

His assessment reflects a broader Iranian argument that a failed American ground campaign would have consequences beyond Iran, potentially weakening US deterrence and accelerating the wider erosion of Washington’s regional position.

From another perspective, however, precisely that reputational question could make disengagement more difficult for Washington.

If the United States has made freedom of navigation and control of escalation around Hormuz a central objective, ending the confrontation without achieving a visible strategic result could carry high political costs.

The result is a conflict in which both sides may recognize the dangers of escalation yet believe that backing down carries unacceptable consequences.

Although it has been absent from the latest phase of direct American-Iranian exchanges, the reopening of shelters in several Israeli municipalities has renewed speculation over whether it could soon find itself involved again.

The shelter decisions alone should not be interpreted as proof of an imminent Iranian attack. Municipal authorities have strong reasons to prepare for contingencies when ballistic-missile warning times are limited.

King said the significance of the measures would increase only if they were accompanied by broader national military preparations.

“A local shelter decision is not, by itself, proof that Israel has intelligence of an imminent Iranian strike,” he said.

“The assessment would become more serious if Israel’s Home Front Command changed national guidance, reserve and air-defense deployments increased, American-Israeli military coordination intensified, or multiple municipalities simultaneously took similar measures,” he added.

Yet the possibility of renewed Israeli intervention cannot be separated from the wider trajectory of the war.

Michael believes that Israel is increasingly likely to find itself drawn back into the confrontation, but he also identified a significant difference between Israeli and American strategic priorities.

“If we are talking about probabilities, there is a higher probability that Israel will find itself involved,” Michael said. “I think that this is not in the Israeli interest currently. I think that Israel prefers that the Americans will do what they have to do,” he added.

The problem, he argued, is that Washington’s immediate focus and Israel’s strategic objectives are not necessarily identical.

“Israel is interested in other issues. Hormuz is not an Israeli issue,” Michael said. “Israel is interested in eliminating, first, the nuclear capabilities of Iran, secondly, the ballistic missiles, thirdly, all the idea of the proxies,” he added.

This creates two very different paths toward Israeli involvement.

Iran could attack Israel directly, forcing Jerusalem to respond and potentially giving the Israeli military greater freedom to pursue its own strategic priorities.

Alternatively, Washington could ask Israel to join an American-led operation whose principal objective remains different from Israel’s own.

In the second scenario, Israel could find itself assuming substantial military risks in support of American objectives while gaining less freedom to determine when and how the campaign ends.

The danger is that any of the current fronts could trigger another.

A US move against Kharg Island could prompt attacks against Gulf oil, water and military infrastructure.

An attempt to mobilize Kurdish or Baluch forces could transform an interstate war into an ethnic and territorial conflict inside Iran while creating new tensions with Turkey and Iraq.

An Iranian raid against Kuwait, Bahrain, or an American military installation could trigger a rapid US response even without any realistic Iranian ability to permanently occupy territory.

Continued Houthi pressure around Bab-el-Mandeb could reduce Saudi Arabia’s ability to compensate for disruption in Hormuz.

And a renewed Iranian attack on Israel could return the Israeli military to the center of a war whose objectives have already expanded well beyond the confrontation that initially brought Washington and Tehran into direct conflict.

For King, the central danger remains that military pressure is interpreted differently on each side.

“The central danger is miscalculation,” he said. “Washington may believe additional pressure will force negotiations, while Tehran may interpret the same pressure as preparation for regime destruction,” he added.

“Once either side adopts the second interpretation, military decisions will be driven by survival rather than bargaining, and the conflict could become region-wide with very little warning,” he added.

For now, there is still no publicly established evidence that Washington has decided to launch a large-scale ground invasion of Iran.

But that may no longer be the only relevant threshold.

The more significant question is whether increasingly discussed territorial options—an island seizure, a special operation, support for Kurdish or other armed groups, or limited Iranian operations against neighboring states—could gradually move from contingency planning into action as both sides search for new forms of leverage.

The conflict is therefore becoming dangerous not only because Washington or Tehran may deliberately choose a wider war, but because each successive attempt to increase pressure reduces the space available for the other side to absorb the attack without responding.

Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Gulf infrastructure, Iran’s internal ethnic divisions, the future of the American military presence and the possibility of renewed Israeli involvement are no longer entirely separate questions.

They are increasingly becoming different fronts of the same strategic confrontation.

And the closer those fronts come to intersecting, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between coercion designed to force an agreement and escalation that makes an agreement impossible.