In the opening days of its confrontation with Israel and the US, Iran widened the battlefield beyond Israel and began launching ballistic missiles and drones at Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
What began as a focused campaign has shifted toward a broader regional confrontation with serious escalation potential.
Tehran is now implementing long-standing warnings that any attack on it would ignite a regional front. But the latest wave goes beyond military targets and US bases. Strikes have also hit clearly civilian infrastructure — airports, ports, industrial zones and energy facilities — marking a dangerous shift from military arenas to the sovereign civilian space of states not directly at war with Iran.
Senior security officials point to three main motives behind the attacks:
