Bahrain and Kuwait secretly sent jets to attack sites inside Iran, their first such direct retaliation against Tehran and an indication of the difficult position Arab states find themselves in as the war grinds on, WSJ reports, citing sources

Direct Gulf Arab strikes on Iranian territory, if confirmed, mark a shift in a well-worn pattern: in past episodes of regional conflict the Arab states have typically limited themselves to air defence, basing permissions and public neutrality, wary that visible participation invites retaliation on their own energy infrastructure and desalination capacity. The historical sequence when Gulf territory becomes a belligerent rather than a bystander has been Iranian signalling toward the Strait of Hormuz, harassment of shipping, or proxy attacks on the peer set's facilities, which is where the transmission to crude runs: through freight rates, war-risk insurance premia and the prompt Brent and Dubai structure rather than any immediate loss of supply. The sourcing matters here, since attribution via unnamed officials to a single outlet has on previous occasions been walked back or reframed, and denial or confirmation from Manama, Kuwait City and Tehran is the first tell. Worth watching is whether this is a one-off under US cover or the start of overt Arab participation, and whether Iranian retaliation targets the states involved or stays asymmetric, as those two paths have historically produced very different durations of risk premium. The distinction between a widened conflict premium and a supply disruption is whether physical flows through Hormuz or from regional export terminals are actually interrupted.