WASHINGTON: The United States plans to redirect Iranian assets to Gulf states to cover rebuilding and repair costs from Iranian strikes, Reuters reported.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has reportedly directed a team to assess damage inflicted on Kuwait and Bahrain after Tehran launched fresh drone attacks on both countries.
It is unknown what kind of Iranian assets the Treasury was examining, and the language used did not appear limited to frozen funds. The U.S. would also consider using Iranian assets to cover any future destruction.
The threat to redirect Iranian assets risks becoming a new irritant in an already fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. The truce was tested again this weekend, with both nations exchanging strikes.
U.S. forces hit Iranian coastal radar sites in Goruk and Qeshm Island, both in the Strait of Hormuz, after shooting down Iranian drones that U.S. Central Command said threatened maritime traffic.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they retaliated against U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Kuwait’s army said it engaged seven ballistic missiles passing over residential areas, causing material damage but no casualties.
In Bahrain, sirens sounded and residents were urged to seek shelter, with both countries condemning the strikes. Iran claimed hits on U.S. bases in both countries, but the U.S. military said six missiles were intercepted and a seventh failed to reach its target.
An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader had earlier said a peace deal hinged on the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets held by the United States.
Peace negotiations appeared to have stalled, though a minister from mediator Pakistan traveled to Tehran on Saturday carrying a letter for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
The U.S. and Iran have been engaged in largely indirect talks for an interim deal that would leave longer-term issues, including Iran’s nuclear program, to future negotiations. Tehran is demanding access to billions of dollars in oil revenue, sanctions waivers on crude exports, the lifting of a U.S. blockade on its ports, and leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has effectively blocked the waterway, through which about a fifth of global oil traffic passed before the war began three months ago.
President Donald Trump faces mounting domestic pressure over rising gas prices to end what has become an unpopular conflict. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that while most of Iran’s drone and missile manufacturing facilities had been destroyed, Iran still retained roughly 21 to 22% of its missile arsenal. The conflict has driven up oil prices and stoked inflation globally.
OPEC+ was set to agree Sunday on a fourth consecutive increase in oil output targets, though the war is still preventing several member countries from pumping more.
Separately, Israel’s military said it intercepted two projectiles that crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon on Sunday, a day after Lebanon reported that two army officers and a soldier were killed in an Israeli strike on a military vehicle in the south.
