For the Persian Gulf’s oil-rich and mostly cosseted residents, Iran’s pummeling has been as unexpected as it has been terrifying. Many expats have beaten a retreat home, as Iran launched missile and drone salvos, tearing up airports, apartment blocks and oil terminals.
For the people of the tiny nation of Kuwait – just 50 miles across the sea from Iran -the conflict is a re-awakening of a decades-old nightmare when it found itself at the heart of the first Gulf War.
In Kuwait City, at the northern end of the gulf, Khalid Al-Ozaina, a spritely 70-year-old fisherman squints into the warming sun as he recalls Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of the country on August 2, 1990. “That was the…