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Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) pushed back Wednesday against accounts that it had damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait International Airport, claiming instead that a malfunctioning American-made Patriot air defense missile was responsible for the destruction, a denial swiftly rejected by the United States military.
IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said the force's Aerospace Division had conducted no strike on the terminal. "Our investigations regarding the impact on Kuwait's passenger terminal show that the IRGC Aerospace Force did not fire at this target," he said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.
He attributed the damage to a Patriot interceptor that he said fell on the building after failing to neutralize incoming Iranian missiles, calling it "an American Patriot system error."
US Central Command (CENTCOM) dismissed the claim in a post on X, calling it "totally false" and stating that Iran had struck the civilian airport with drones in what the command characterized as a "deliberate, calculated, and unjustified attack."
The denials over the airport came as the IRGC separately acknowledged Wednesday that it had carried out strikes on a US military base in Kuwait and on the US Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. The corps said those attacks were launched in retaliation for an overnight American strike on an IRGC communications tower on Qeshm Island in southern Iran.
The competing claims illustrate a pattern that has accompanied the broader conflict, in which both sides have regularly disputed the origin and intent of individual strikes, even while acknowledging the wider military exchanges between them.
The airport incident has already produced diplomatic consequences. Kuwait expelled two Iranian diplomats and declared them persona non grata, giving them 24 hours to leave the country.
Iran's charge d'affaires was summoned by Kuwaiti authorities following the strikes, and Kuwait's Foreign Ministry moved to reduce the overall number of Iranian diplomatic personnel permitted in the country.
The Patriot missile system, developed by the United States and deployed by several Gulf states as a primary air defense platform, has become a contested element in the information war surrounding the strikes.
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