In the early hours of this morning, as most of Kuwait City slept, the first explosions lit up the tarmac of the international airport. New footage, grainy and shot from a nearby residential tower, shows an Iranian drone strike hitting the eastern runway. Within minutes, British Typhoons were scrambled from RAF Akrotiri, their roar a familiar sound to those who remember the 1990s. But this is not a replay of Desert Storm. This is something new.
For the expat community in Kuwait, the airport is a lifeline. It is where they arrive for work, where they send their children to school, where they fly home for Christmas or Diwali. Now it is a war zone. I spoke to Priya, a young Indian nurse, who was waiting for a taxi after her night shift when she saw the flash. "I thought it was thunder," she said. "But the sky was clear. Then the sirens started."
The scene she described was one of controlled chaos. Airport staff, many of them Filipino and Nepali, were rushed into bunkers. Passengers, a mix of business travellers and families, huddled in departure lounges as the lights flickered. One British oil executive told me he saw a Kuwaiti soldier shouting at a mother to leave her luggage. "She had a baby in her arms," he said. "She didn't care about the bags."
This is not just a military incident. It is a cultural shift. For decades, the Gulf has been a haven of stability, a place where people from over 100 nationalities built lives, savings, and dreams. Now, the region's airports are becoming symbols of vulnerability. First Abu Dhabi, then Dubai, now Kuwait. The psychology is shifting from "temporary expat" to "potential refugee."
Class dynamics are also at play. The western expats in their compounds and the guest workers in shared apartments both watched the same footage on their phones. But their responses differ. The former are checking insurance policies and emergency contacts. The latter are calling families back home, reassuring them, or lying about the noise. As one Bangladeshi cleaner told me: "They will tell us to stay. But if the bombs come, who will help us?"
The RAF's response is swift, but it is a reminder of Britain's diminished role. Not a full deployment, but a show of force. For the man on the street in Kuwait, it is the sound of a former protector returning, but with less conviction. The question now is not whether Iran will strike again, but whether the Gulf's social fabric can withstand the fear. Because when you stop trusting the sky, you stop trusting the ground you walk on.
As I file this report, the airport remains closed. The stranded are being bussed to hotels. The roads are quiet. This is the human cost of a new crisis: not just the wounded, but the wounded way of life. It is the end of an era of invincibility. And for the millions who call the Gulf their temporary home, it is the beginning of a long, anxious wait.
