Is It Unjust to Lack Sympathy for Iran Because They Are Shia?

As tensions between Iran and other Gulf countries intensify, the narrative war on social media has become increasingly heated. Who is Sunni and who is Shia has become the new standard for offering support.

It is not my task to judge those theological and eschatological differences. What I can do, trained by seniors at the office, is to try to read the facts.

The facts, not a secret, are that this war was started by the US and Israel with an attack on Iran on 28 February. Importantly, this attack occurred while Iran and the US were in negotiations. Oman, as an intermediary, witnessed that Iran was prepared to make significant sacrifices in the draft agreement. What is rarely told is that Iran was also ready to relinquish their enriched uranium on the condition that it be stored in neighbouring Muslim countries.

It was later revealed that Trump, who had already amassed military forces in the Gulf, launched a sudden attack because he was promised by Netanyahu that it would topple the Iranian regime in a matter of days. We now know that this was mere Mossad nonsense.

Many parties, even Germany—a close ally of the US and Israel—have deemed the US-Israeli attack illegal and in violation of international rules.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, along with his family including children and grandchildren, died in that attack. As many as 48 high-ranking Iranian officials were also eliminated. In Minab, 167 schoolgirls became martyrs after being bombed twice with US Tomahawk missiles.

Logistically, the US could not have carried out that attack without their bases in Gulf countries. The attack on the girls’ school, for example, had to be launched not far from Iran from warships, submarines, or land bases.

Initial investigations revealed that the US Navy fired those missiles. In the Gulf, the main US Navy base is in Manama, Bahrain. This base serves as the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet and US Naval Forces Central Command. It was the first US base attacked by Iran in retaliation for the US and Israeli strikes.

Other supporting bases for US naval military movements that can deploy Tomahawk launchers include Arifjan in Kuwait and Al Udeid in Qatar. In Arifjan, Iran’s retaliatory attack killed six US soldiers.

Meanwhile, US fighter jets that violated Iranian airspace require long flight times and thus must refuel in the air. Where are the US aerial tankers parked? Mostly at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Recently, the US military admitted that Iran’s retaliatory attack damaged five KC-135 Stratotanker refuelling aircraft of the US Air Force at that base. The US side said that after repairs, those aircraft will operate again to support attacks on Iran.

In the early stages of escalation, Iran only targeted those bases. Subsequently, hotels where US troops were sheltering in the United Arab Emirates and the US Embassy buildings in those countries.

As the war progressed, Israel began attacking Iran’s oil and gas and electricity facilities. On 8 March, Israel struck four oil storage facilities and an oil production transfer centre in Tehran and Alborz province. Tehran was shrouded in toxic smoke while oil from the Shahran depot leaked onto the streets. This triggered Iran’s retaliatory attacks on oil and gas facilities in Israel and US-linked Gulf countries.

On 18 March 2026, Israel attacked Iran’s oil and natural gas infrastructure at the South Pars field and the Asaluyeh refinery. Iran responded by attacking the LNG processing city in Ras Laffan, Qatar.

Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Gulf countries appeared random on the surface. In fact, the Iranian missiles hit exactly two refineries owned by the US oil company ExxonMobil and one GTL facility owned by Shell (British-Dutch).

Iran’s attacks on Gulf territories also killed civilians.

In the UAE, for example, the military claimed to have intercepted 314 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles, and 1,672 drones. Eight people were killed by shrapnel during operations to counter the Iranian retaliation.

In Kuwait, eight civilians died. One of them, an 11-year-old child, died from shrapnel of an intercepted missile. The causes of death for the others were not explained.

In Qatar, there was a death due to a Qatar Armed Forces helicopter crashing into the sea due to technical failure. The incident, which killed one soldier and two Turkish technicians as well as four Qatari soldiers, was not related to the Iranian attack.

In Bahrain, a worker was killed when debris from an intercepted missile fell onto a foreign ship undergoing maintenance in Salman Industrial City. A US Patriot missile was also involved in an explosion that injured dozens of people in Bahrain on 9 March. Previously, the US claimed the explosion was caused by an Iranian drone attack.

A 29-year-old woman was killed and eight others injured when a residential building in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, was hit by a missile. Meanwhile, two people were killed in Oman by a downed drone in Sohar.

Saudi Arabia reported two people killed and 20 others injured, including 12 in the Al Kharj government centre, after a projectile fell in a residential area.

From these incidents in the Gulf countries, it is evident that most deaths were not directly targeted by Iran but resulted from shrapnel of Iranian missiles intercepted by the relevant countries.

Because they were intercepted first, we do not know for certain where those missiles and drones were originally aimed. Perhaps only ‘17 percent’ of Iranian missiles and drones reached Israel due to these interceptions in the Gulf countries. Even in Israel, of the 19 fatalities, most were also hit by missile shrapnel.