Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Iran targeting its Persian Gulf neighbors, local elections in South Korea, and Ukraine’s strategically timed attack on Russia.
Missiles and Drones
A major Iranian aerial attack heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait International Airport on Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring more than 60 others. According to the Kuwaiti Defense Ministry, Iran fired 13 ballistic missiles and 17 drones at the country, making the assault one of Tehran’s biggest attacks on a Persian Gulf neighbor since the U.S.-Iran cease-fire took effect in April.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Iran targeting its Persian Gulf neighbors, local elections in South Korea, and Ukraine’s strategically timed attack on Russia.
Missiles and Drones
A major Iranian aerial attack heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait International Airport on Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring more than 60 others. According to the Kuwaiti Defense Ministry, Iran fired 13 ballistic missiles and 17 drones at the country, making the assault one of Tehran’s biggest attacks on a Persian Gulf neighbor since the U.S.-Iran cease-fire took effect in April.
Kuwait will “neither accept nor tolerate” continued Iranian attacks on its soil, Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry said, adding that it was expelling two Iranian diplomats in response. The airport, which briefly closed following Wednesday’s attack, had just reopened two days earlier after being shuttered for months due to the Iran war.
In a Wednesday post on X, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote, “Our Armed Forces are conducting self-defense strikes on sites the U.S. is permitted to use to attack civilian shipping and violate the ceasefire.” The post included a video of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling Congress that U.S. allies in the region, such as the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, “have been very cooperative” in the war effort.
Also on Wednesday, the U.S. military said it intercepted several Iranian attacks on Bahrain and carried out a new round of “self-defense” strikes on southern Iran, including on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Central Command denied Tehran’s claims that Iranian forces had hit the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain as well as a U.S.-linked vessel identified as the Panaya.
Experts warned that Wednesday’s attacks could jeopardize ongoing peace talks. U.S. President Donald Trump maintains that negotiations are ongoing. In a podcast interview released on Wednesday, Trump said that although Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is believed to have been severely injured in the war, he is involved in decision-making regarding the negotiations. Trump also claimed that Tehran has agreed not to develop a nuclear weapon.
That same day, though, Iranian media agency Tasnim reported that Tehran had not responded to Washington in recent days, adding that text exchanges through intermediaries had been suspended until Iran’s demands regarding Lebanon had been met. “The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” Araghchi wrote on X on Monday, referring to continued Israeli strikes on alleged Hezbollah sites in Lebanon.
As diplomats scramble to secure a peace deal in the Middle East, analysts warn that efforts to prevent long-term economic repercussions could be too little, too late. In a new report published Wednesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecast that global growth would slow from 3.4 percent in 2025 to 2.8 percent in 2026 before recovering to 3.1 percent in 2027. But that’s only if the energy crisis caused by the Iran war eases soon.
If the conflict rages on, then global growth could slow to 2.1 percent in 2026 and 1.8 percent in 2027. “[T]he longer the disruptions last, the larger the economic and social costs become,” OECD chief economist Stefano Scarpetta wrote in the report.
Paralysis in the Strait of Hormuz and heavy damage to Gulf energy infrastructure have raised prices of critical goods, including fuel, fertilizer, and helium. Global oil prices rose nearly 2 percent on Wednesday in response to the latest slew of attacks.
Continued disruptions could tip many major economies closer to recession levels, the OECD warned, as foreign investment weakens and unemployment rates grow. In this scenario, global inflation could increase by 0.4 percentage points in 2026 and 1.3 percentage points in 2027.
“The consequences would be global but could prove especially severe for developing economies with limited energy reserves, higher shares of energy and food in household consumption, constrained fiscal capacity and weak social safety nets, low private savings buffers and more fragile currencies,” Scarpetta wrote.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Big wins for Lee. South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party is expected to sweep local elections on Wednesday in what many viewed as a referendum on President Lee Jae-myung’s leadership. According to initial exit polls, 11 out of 16 mayoral and gubernatorial races are on track to go to the Democratic Party, with the conservative People Power Party (PPP) securing just one win. Four contests remained too close to call. Such results mark a stunning loss for the PPP, which snagged a landslide victory four years ago in the country’s last local elections.
Lee replaced PPP leader Yoon Suk-yeol as president last June, just two months after Yoon was removed from office for his decision in December 2024 to invoke a short-lived martial law order. Since then, Lee has sought to portray himself as a pragmatic leader. He has improved bilateral relations with Japan, negotiated security and trade deals with the United States, enacted legislation to promote greater government transparency, and breathed life back into the country’s flailing stock market—all of which have pushed his approval ratings to around 65 percent, among the highest for any modern South Korean president.
Meanwhile, the country’s conservative base is struggling to bounce back from the fallout of Yoon’s attempted insurrection. The only major non-Democratic Party candidate outpacing Lee’s party for a seat is Han Dong-hoon, who is vying for a win in Busan. Han, now an independent, led an anti-Yoon reformist faction in the PPP before being expelled from the party in January.
Strategically timed attack. Ukrainian drones hit a Russian oil terminal in St. Petersburg as well as military targets at a nearby naval base on Wednesday, the same day that Moscow kicked off a Davos-like economic forum there. Targeting the home city of Russian President Vladimir Putin during an important event for the Kremlin came just one day after Moscow launched a devastating assault on Kyiv. This was the second time in a month that Ukraine has targeted a Russian city in coordination with a major event.
Putin was expected to use this week’s economic conference to attract foreign investment, cultivate an image of national prosperity, and bolster public opinion at home. Ukraine’s strikes on the city did not affect the forum itself. However, experts expect the incident to cast doubt on the effectiveness of Russia’s air defense systems as well as undermine Moscow’s claims that it is winning the war.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv’s long-range drone campaign has cost Russia around $7 billion. However, the Russian Finance Ministry stressed on Wednesday that rising fuel prices due to the Iran war have offset the losses. Moscow received $9.2 billion in revenue from oil and gas exports in May—$2.3 billion more than what it had anticipated to earn before the Iran conflict ignited—and expects to receive an additional $3 billion in June.
Violent clashes. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for calm on Wednesday after a night of violent protests erupted in the English city of Southampton, injuring 11 officers. The demonstrations were in response to a video released Monday that shows police ignoring a handcuffed 18-year-old white man as he lay dying. Far-right Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage and other commentators have since capitalized on the incident to argue that British police discriminate against white people.
In December 2025, college student Henry Nowak was stabbed by 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, who is Sikh, during a chance encounter on the street. When police arrived, Digwa falsely claimed that Nowak had targeted him in a racist attack. Police handcuffed Nowak, and he remained that way for roughly a minute before police realized that he was severely wounded and began administering first aid. On Monday, Digwa was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Nowak.
Farage urged Britons to respond to Nowak’s death with “pure cold rage,” arguing that British authorities practice “two-tier policing” that treats various ethnic groups differently; Farage has long touted a xenophobic, anti-immigrant platform. Other far-right voices and online commentators, including Elon Musk, have amplified that message, with activist Tommy Robinson urging people to gather in Southhampton to protest on Tuesday. But Starmer on Wednesday stressed that “there is no justification for more violence and disorder,” adding that “this is a time for serious work, not rage.”
Odds and Ends
For most of the year, Oamaru is a small New Zealand town with just 14,000 human residents and 3,000 native penguins. But from May 28 to June 1, it is the steampunk capital of the world. Hundreds of attendees flocked to the South Island village this year to celebrate the 17th annual Steampunk Festival, which celebrates the unique blend of Victorian aesthetics with science fiction steam-driven mechanics. Participants in fantastical costumes competed in teacup-racing, parasol-dueling, and cookie-dunking contests to the backdrop of Oamaru’s preserved Victorian-era precinct. Because, why not?
