Iran launches missile attack on US base in Qatar
Muscat – Iran launched a missile attack late Monday on the American Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, claiming it was in response to US strikes on its nuclear facilities.
Witnesses in Doha reported seeing missiles streak across the sky followed by loud explosions. Flares were visible as air defence systems at Al Udeid engaged the incoming projectiles. It remains unclear if any damage was sustained.
Iranian state television hailed the strike as 'a mighty and successful response' to what it described as 'America's aggression'.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian posted on social media before the attack: 'We neither initiated the war nor seek it. But we will not leave invasion to the great Iran without answer.'
Shortly before the blasts, Qatar temporarily closed its airspace as a precaution amid threats of Iranian retaliation. Both the US and UK embassies in Qatar had earlier advised citizens to shelter.
Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the missile attack as a 'violation of Qatar's sovereignty and airspace and the UN Charter'. It reported no injuries or casualties.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al Ansari said Qatari air defences successfully intercepted the missiles targeting the US base and warned that Qatar 'reserves the right to respond directly' in line with international law.
Iran's Tasnim news agency reported that the operation, dubbed Annunciation of Victory, targeted US bases in both Qatar and Iraq. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed its forces launched the strike on Al Udeid.
Al Udeid Air Base, near Doha, hosts the largest American military presence in the Middle East, with over 8,000 US personnel stationed there.
Regional tensions remain high following the US bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday.
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Then came Masoud Pezeshkian's surprising election to the presidency in June 2024. A more reform-minded figure, he succeeded Ebrahim Raisi, who had made hijab enforcement a priority and cracked down violently on protests. By contrast, when a new hijab law was passed, Pezeshkian refused to enforce it, allowing a new social norm to take hold. Moreover, the Iranian economy is not as weak as foreign media coverage often suggests. The data do not paint a rosy picture, but nor do they point to an imminent collapse. Despite the draconian US sanctions imposed in 2018 (after Donald Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal), the economy has been slowly recovering. By 2024, GDP had surpassed its 2018 peak, and growth averaged around 3 per cent per year – aided by oil exports that benefited from the Biden administration's lax sanctions enforcement. Pezeshkian's appointments — including a progressive minister of welfare and labour and a young Chicago-educated economy minister — signalled a turn toward better economic management. Internally, there has been a major debate over whether Iran can meet the 8 per cent growth target that is regularly listed in annual budgets and five-year plans. The consensus among economists was 'not without sanctions relief,' which in turn would require diplomacy, not missiles. Still, the Pezeshkian administration's economic reforms likely bolstered the urban middle class's willingness to stand with the government in the face of Israeli air strikes. Iran's rather measured response to the US attack on its nuclear sites shows where its leaders' priorities lie. They see renewed conflict as a distraction from their development mission, originally laid out in the 2005 Twenty-Year Vision Plan to place Iran among the region's top economies by 2025. 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