Iran targets US allies in Gulf after overnight attacks, and other Mideast news

Iran targeted Gulf allies of the United States on Wednesday, firing drones at Kuwait and Bahrain after a night of U.S. aerial bombardment of Iran.

Iranian officials said one of the U.S. strikes on the country overnight struck a wedding party, leaving at least four people dead and dozens wounded.

Fighting between the U.S. and Iran has increased this week after the U.S. hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, saying Iran was planning to use them to shoot mines into the waterway. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan, which were all intercepted.

Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.

The U.S. Central Command said Tuesday’s strikes focused on Iranian military targets including air defense sites, radar systems and maritime assets.

But Iranian media said one U.S. strike hit a home hosting a wedding in Kuhestak, a small town on the coast overlooking the Strait of Hormuz.

Four people were killed — two women and two children, aged 4 and 16 — and at least 68 were wounded, the state news agency IRNA and state TV said Wednesday. Just after the strike, Ahmad Nafisi, the province’s deputy governor, had told Iranian state television that five people were killed. There was no explanation for the change.

The U.S. military said it was aware of the report but that it “never targets civilians.”

Bahrain said its air defense systems intercepted several Iranian air attacks early Wednesday, without providing further details.

Iranian state media said Iran’s military had launched drone attacks on U.S. bases in Bahrain and in the United Arab Emirates in response to the overnight attacks.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Iran acted in self-defense in retaliation for U.S. violations of Iran’s sovereignty.

Saudi shipping company Bahri said two Filipino sailors were killed in an attack late Monday as their vessel transited the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement Wednesday, the company said its ship, named the SIDR, was “involved in a security incident” in the strait shortly before midnight on Monday that resulted in the loss of two of their seafarers.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the Saudi tanker.

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack.

The ministry said the oil-rich kingdom stresses the need to halt escalation and respect the security and safety of international navigation and of global energy supplies.

The Saudi ministry called on all parties to return to negotiations and peaceful solutions.

Iran has established a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passed in peacetime, after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Ship traffic through the waterway has slowed to a trickle, roiling the global economy and spiking prices for energy and other goods across the world.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” that multiple officials in President Donald Trump's administration are talking to other nations still doing business with Iran and pressuring them to stop.

He avoided mentioning Russia specifically, even when asked.

“My message to everyone is stay away,” Bessent said. “We all want this conflict to end, and the fastest way for the conflict to end is for no one to provide any support to this regime. We are going to sever every tie that they have from the outside world.”

Top diplomats in Egypt and Qatar have called for the U.S. and Iran to return to the negotiating table in line with their collapsed ceasefire deal.

Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty of Egypt spoke by phone on Wednesday with his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

The ministers warned that the ongoing escalation threatens “dire consequences on the region’s security and stability,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said.

Iran’s currency market hit a record low Wednesday, hours after the exchange of fire between the country and the U.S. over control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Traders in the Tehran market exchanged 2.20 million rials for one U.S. dollar, nearly 10% higher than last week’s record, on Aug. 25, when one dollar was sold at 2.02 million rials.

The currency had already been under pressure before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, as Iran faced double-digit inflation and negative growth. The rial has repeatedly hit new lows since the war began.

The Council of Arab Interior Ministers described Iran’s attacks on Kuwait, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain as a “violation of international law.”

The council said Iran’s “brutal aggression” is part of Tehran’s efforts to destabilize security and stability in the region. The council also said the attacks threaten international peace and security.

The leaders of China and Egypt welcomed regional efforts to “reach political understandings” aiming at restoring peace and stability in the Middle East amid renewed escalation between Iran and the United States.

President Xi Jinping of China and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi held talks in Cairo on Wednesday that focused on bilateral ties and regional and international topics.

They welcomed regional efforts to ease tensions and promote “peace and stability in the Gulf and the Middle East,” according to a joint communique following the talks.

Pakistan said Wednesday it remains engaged with the United States and Iran, with support from regional countries, in efforts to bring Washington and Tehran back to the negotiating table.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told a weekly news briefing in Islamabad that Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a political and security group billed as a counterweight to the U.S. global influence.

A man drove through a crowd gathered in the northern Iranian city of Mashhad late Tuesday, killing four people and injuring more than 10, the official IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

Quoting local traffic police, the semiofficial Fars news agency described the incident as a road accident and implied the driver might have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

This story has been corrected to show that Iranian state media are now reporting that four people were killed in the strike on the wedding, not five. They gave no explanation for the change.

People spend time at a beach as commercial vessels are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil giant Chevron confirmed that it will expand its operations in Venezuela, just days after President Donald Trump announced an ambitious deal to develop the nation’s oil reserves and give the Pentagon a stake in the profits.

Chevron, the only U.S. oil company with a major presence in the country, said Wednesday that it has been assigned additional acreage in the Orinoco Belt, where it already has operations. The company plans to invest more than $7 billion over the next five years, with the goal of more than doubling production from its 2026 level to approximately 600,000 barrels a day.

“Chevron’s history in Venezuela spans more than a century, and our expanded position reflects our confidence in the country’s deep resource potential and its ability to compete for investment within our portfolio for decades,” CEO Mike Wirth said in a prepared statement.

Venezuela holds the world's largest proven reserves, totaling more than 303 billion barrels of crude oil, according to OPEC's 2025 Annual Statistical Bulletin. Saudi Arabia is a distant second with 267 billion barrels.

Yet because Venezuela's the energy infrastructure is severely degraded and the nation is operating under international sanctions, its daily production is just over 1 million barrels, compared with the 10 million to 11 million barrels that Saudi Arabia produces each day. The U.S. produces almost 14 million barrels per day.

Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, has had a presence in Venezuela since 1923. Its joint ventures, Petroindependencia and Petropiar S.A., operate extra-heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Oil Belt, while Petroboscan, S.A. is located in the Zulia State in western Venezuela.

The White House confirmed Monday that it is partnering with North American Blue Energy Partners as part of Trump ’s push to tap into Venezuela’s oil industry.

“What we’re doing is increasing the confidence for private businesses to come do deals in Venezuela, directly with the government of Venezuela," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said during an interview Wednesday on CNBC.

Yet the agreement has been met with skepticism from analysts who say it will take years to revive Venezuela’s oil industry, which is in disarray after years of neglect.

There are also questions about whether Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez has the authority to give Chevron 100-year rights over 17 oil fields with reserves of 65 billion barrels — and whether future Venezuelan or American administrations would overturn the agreement.

Venezuela's constitution states that arrangements like the one that the United States announced this week must be approved by the National Assembly, which has not happened, wrote Ian Vásquez, vice president for international studies at the Cato Institute.

“The deal lacks legitimacy since it was agreed to with a dictatorship that has clung to power for decades through violence and by committing what was probably the largest electoral fraud in Latin American history in 2024,” Vásquez wrote. “The agreement was also reached under overwhelming pressure, military and otherwise, from the United States. As such, any future Venezuelan democracy will question the deal, thus undermining confidence in the current arrangement.”

Trump has eyed Venezuela’s oil since the capture of Nicolás Maduro and has pressed to get U.S. businesses back into the country. “We have Exxon going in, we have Chevron going in. We have our big oil companies going in,” he said in January.

He suggested again on Monday that other U.S. oil majors were preparing for a return, though other than Chevron, there is no evidence of that.

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said in January that Venezuela was “ uninvestable.” An Exxon spokesman said this week that “nothing has changed.”

The history of U.S. oil majors in Venezuela explains the hesitation.

Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976 and created the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. A second nationalization occurred in 2007, when President Hugo Chávez pushed foreign oil companies into state-controlled joint ventures and seized the assets of companies that refused. Chevron agreed to a joint venture. Others, including Exxon and ConocoPhillips, refused, and Venezuela took their assets.

Trump has said that the agreement with Venezuela would “substantially lower” gasoline prices in the U.S. However, experts have repeatedly warned that Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure will require years of restoration work and tens of billions of dollars to resuscitate.

Meanwhile, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline jumped overnight to $4.12, according to the motor club AAA. That is 93 cents more than it cost at this point last year.

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

A woman covering a child from the rain walks along the shore of Lake Maracaibo in the oil-producing region of Cabimas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A fisherman steers his boat on Lake Maracaibo in the oil-producing region of Cabimas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A woman walks near of a oil storage tank of Venezuela's state-run oil company, PDVSA in Cabimas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Sep. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)