An Iranian drone struck the Kuwaiti very large crude carrier Al Salmi in the anchorage area of Dubai Port just after midnight on Tuesday, 31 March 2026, damaging the vessel’s hull and triggering a fire on board a fully laden tanker carrying hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the Kuwaiti state oil company, confirmed the attack in a statement issued through the Kuwait News Agency and warned of a potential oil spill in the surrounding waters of the Dubai coastline.
The Dubai government media office confirmed that the incident involved a drone and stated that maritime firefighting teams were immediately mobilised to bring the fire under control. All 24 crew members aboard the Al Salmi were reported safe, with no casualties confirmed. Emergency response teams were deployed in close coordination with relevant United Arab Emirates authorities to contain the situation and prevent further environmental damage.
According to ship tracker Maritime Optima, the Al Salmi (IMO 9534793) is a very large crude carrier built in 2011 sailing under the Kuwaiti flag. The vessel measures 333 metres in overall length with a beam of 60 metres, making it one of the largest class of oil tankers in operation. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation is the parent company of the vessel’s registered owner and commercial operator, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence data.
The attack on the Al Salmi represents a significant escalation of Iran’s campaign against Gulf shipping, bringing Iranian drone strikes into Dubai Port itself, one of the busiest commercial port hubs in the Middle East. Previous attacks since the start of the Iran war on 28 February 2026 had primarily targeted vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, and waters off Fujairah and Ras Tanura. The strike on a vessel inside Dubai Port marks the first confirmed Iranian drone attack directly within the anchorage area of a major United Arab Emirates commercial port.
What is the broader context of Iranian attacks on Gulf shipping since February 2026?
The war in the Middle East began on 28 February 2026 following joint United States and Israeli military strikes on Iran, which included the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps began a sustained campaign of missile and drone attacks against United States military bases, Israeli territory, and Gulf Arab states. Iran simultaneously imposed an effective halt to commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea through which approximately 20 percent of the world’s oil supply had previously passed.
By 12 March 2026, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations had recorded 16 confirmed attacks on shipping and four suspicious incidents in the Persian Gulf since the start of hostilities. United States forces began a military campaign to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on 19 March 2026. Partial tanker movement through the strait resumed in the days before the Al Salmi attack, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attributing the resumption to ongoing direct and indirect talks between the United States and Iran. The Al Salmi attack signals that Iran’s maritime campaign has not ended despite those partial diplomatic developments.
Kuwait has been among the Gulf states most severely affected by the Iranian campaign. Iranian forces had previously struck Kuwait’s largest oil refinery, Mina al-Ahmadi, on two separate occasions, including a second strike on 20 March 2026 that sparked fires across multiple processing units with a combined throughput of approximately 730,000 barrels per day. Iran also attacked a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant and struck the country’s social security administration building, which the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation chief executive Sheikh Nawaf al-Sabah cited as evidence that Iran’s assurances about limiting attacks to United States infrastructure were false.
How has Kuwait responded to the escalating Iranian attacks on its oil and civilian infrastructure?
Sheikh Nawaf al-Sabah, chief executive of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, described Iran’s conduct as an economic blockade of the Persian Gulf’s Arab oil producers. Speaking at the S&P Global CERAWeek energy conference, he stated that Kuwait was outraged by the attacks and warned that Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz would trigger a domino effect across the global economy extending well beyond oil and gas supplies. He added that it would take Gulf Arab oil producers months to restore full output once the conflict ended. Kuwait issued an extreme threat alert level for its residents following the Al Salmi attack.
On 26 March 2026, Kuwait joined the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and Jordan in a joint condemnation of Iran and its affiliated armed groups in Iraq for attacks against countries in the region and their facilities and infrastructure. The Gulf Cooperation Council additionally co-sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution passed in mid-March 2026 that urged Iran to stop egregious attacks against its regional neighbours and demanded an end to threats to maritime routes. The resolution was co-sponsored by 135 countries, with China and Russia abstaining.
What are the environmental and shipping risks from the Al Salmi attack on Dubai Port waters?
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation explicitly warned that the Al Salmi attack created a risk of an oil spill in the surrounding waters of Dubai Port’s anchorage area. The vessel was fully laden at the time of the strike, meaning it carried a maximum crude oil cargo, amplifying the potential scale of any spill. An uncontrolled release of crude oil from a very large crude carrier in a confined anchorage area would pose immediate environmental risks to the surrounding coastline, affect port operations at Dubai Port and the broader Jebel Ali complex, and contaminate waters used by desalination facilities and marine ecosystems in the Gulf.
Emergency response and firefighting teams were reported to be working as of the time of publication to contain the fire and prevent an oil release. The Dubai government confirmed that maritime firefighting operations were underway. The full extent of structural damage to the Al Salmi’s hull had not been assessed at the time of initial reporting. A Greek-owned container ship, the Express Rome, had separately reported two unknown projectiles splashing into the water near its vessel approximately 22 nautical miles northeast of Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura earlier on the same day, indicating continued targeting of commercial shipping across multiple Gulf locations.
What is the United States position on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s maritime attacks as of March 2026?
United States President Donald Trump threatened to target Iranian power facilities and potentially desalination plants if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz fully and without restrictions. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the United States military would act within the confines of the law. United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio told media that President Trump always preferred diplomacy but warned of real consequences over Iran’s partial closure of the strait. Rubio declined to name which Iranian officials the United States was in contact with, after Trump said Washington was in talks with a new and more reasonable Iranian regime.
United States crude oil prices settled above 100 United States dollars per barrel for the first time since July 2022 as news of the Al Salmi attack reached markets, with oil prices rising approximately 2 percent on the development. An Iranian parliamentary security committee had separately approved a plan to regulate and impose tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz on the same day as the Al Salmi attack, a measure the United States administration publicly rejected. Leavitt said the United States did not support any tolling system and that the movement of tankers through the strait was the result of direct and indirect talks, not an endorsement of Iran’s proposed toll regime.
How has the Iran war affected United Arab Emirates port infrastructure and regional energy security since February 2026?
The United Arab Emirates has experienced sustained Iranian missile and drone attacks since 28 February 2026. As of 28 March 2026, eleven people had been killed in the United Arab Emirates, including two Emirati military personnel and one civilian contractor of Moroccan nationality working for the Emirati armed forces, with 178 people injured across 29 nationalities. The UAE Ministry of Defense reported that its air defence systems had engaged a total of 414 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles, and 1,914 unmanned aerial vehicles since the start of the conflict.
Iranian strikes damaged structures in Dubai including areas around Palm Jumeirah and near the Burj Al Arab hotel, caused fires at Jebel Ali Port through debris from aerial interceptions, and forced temporary closures of Dubai International Airport on multiple occasions. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company shut its Ruwais refinery following an Iranian drone strike on the Ruwais Industrial Complex, a facility that would otherwise produce 922,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Oil production across the United Arab Emirates dropped by between 500,000 and 800,000 barrels per day as a result of the accumulated damage and operational disruptions.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally described Iranian attacks as terrorist attacks on 19 March 2026. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan stated that the United Arab Emirates would not be blackmailed by terrorists. UAE Presidential Adviser Anwar Gargash said the war needed to end with a long-term solution for security in the Persian Gulf and discouraged any ceasefire arrangement that would not achieve that objective. Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, characterised the targeting of energy infrastructure throughout the region as global economic warfare.
Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were reported to be urging the United States to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Iran had not been weakened sufficiently after one month of hostilities. Saudi Arabia argued to the United States that ending the war without sufficient guarantees would not produce a good deal for Iran’s Arab neighbours, according to reports citing diplomatic sources. Oman and Qatar, which have historically served as intermediaries between Iran and Western governments, favoured a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
Key takeaways: What the Al Salmi attack means for Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and global energy security
- An Iranian drone struck the Kuwaiti very large crude carrier Al Salmi at approximately 12:10 am on 31 March 2026 in the anchorage area of Dubai Port, damaging the hull and starting a fire on a fully laden vessel; all 24 crew members were confirmed safe with no casualties reported.
- Kuwait Petroleum Corporation warned of a potential oil spill from the fully laden Al Salmi into Dubai Port’s surrounding waters, with maritime firefighting teams mobilised by Dubai authorities working to contain the fire and prevent an environmental release.
- The attack extends Iran’s maritime campaign from the Strait of Hormuz and open Persian Gulf waters into the anchorage of Dubai Port, marking a geographic escalation at the heart of one of the region’s principal commercial and energy logistics hubs.
- United States crude oil prices rose above 100 United States dollars per barrel following the attack, reflecting ongoing market concern about the security of Gulf energy infrastructure and the viability of resumed tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
- An Iranian parliamentary committee approved a tolling plan for the Strait of Hormuz on the same day as the Al Salmi attack; the United States administration publicly rejected the proposal, maintaining that full reopening without restrictions remained a core United States objective.
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