Kuwait City

Overview

Kuwait City is the capital and political center of Kuwait. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it is the seat of the country’s principal political institutions and a center of commerce and religious life. Events in the city have often reflected Kuwait’s position between larger regional powers: Iraq invaded the country in 1990; networks tied to the Iranian regime carried out or planned attacks; and political disputes over the powers of the emir and parliament culminated in the suspension of the constitution in 2024.

The city’s international connections have also made it a setting for disputes extending beyond Kuwait. Its airport was among the targets of a 1983 bombing campaign by Hezbollah and Iraqi Dawa operatives. Decades later, Kuwait City appeared in the routes of a sanctioned aircraft owned by Mahan Airlines and leased to Syrian Air. An Israeli passenger’s canceled journey through the city became the subject of a German court case, while titles promoting Jew hatred appeared in the online catalog of its 2019 state-run book fair.

Geography

Kuwait City lies on Kuwait’s coast, facing the Persian Gulf. That location connects its airport, commerce and essential services to developments across the Gulf. It also shapes two distinct security concerns: missiles launched from the Iranian regime’s territory could reach the city, and seawater used for desalination could carry contamination after a serious nuclear accident across the Gulf. By 2007, Kuwait City was within range of even the shortest and oldest missiles in Tehran’s arsenal.

Assessments of a possible accident at the Iranian regime’s Bushehr nuclear plant identified Kuwait City as vulnerable because Persian Gulf currents could carry radioactive contamination toward Kuwait. The projected danger extended to all six desalination plants serving the city. This was a risk assessment, not a record of an accident or contamination. Its significance lay in the city’s dependence on desalinated water: a disruption affecting those plants would reach beyond the immediate coastal area into daily urban life.

Kuwait City’s Gulf location also places it within a network of nearby capitals and transport centers, including Manama, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Those connections help explain why regional conflicts and sanctions can affect the city without fighting taking place within it. Aircraft serving Kuwait City, for example, also traveled through Damascus during the Syrian civil war. Kuwait’s own political decisions have likewise been judged against the development of other Gulf cities.

Modern history

In 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, placing its capital under Iraqi control. A United States-led coalition liberated the country during the 1991 Gulf War. The invasion and liberation remain defining events in Kuwait City’s modern history. After liberation, the ruling House of Sabah retained final authority while Kuwait developed a political system with an elected National Assembly and a comparatively free press. That arrangement gave parliamentary politics a substantial role in national life, including debates over the capital’s development.

Regional tensions continued after the war. Following the 2006 Lebanon War, the Iranian regime’s ambitions contributed to a practical rapprochement between Israel and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Kuwait. Security concerns were one reason for closer practical interests, though Kuwait maintained its boycott of Israel. Kuwait City thus occupied two positions at once: it was part of Gulf discussions about threats from Tehran, while Kuwaiti policy still excluded Israeli passengers from its state-owned airline.

By 2024, repeated political gridlock had impeded the development of Kuwait City compared with Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Disputes between elected lawmakers and the executive repeatedly interrupted government. In May 2024, Kuwait suspended its constitution and dissolved parliament, ending the parliamentary arrangement that had shaped much of the post-1991 period. The change affected the institutions based in the capital and the political setting in which decisions about its future would be made.

Security

On December 12, 1983, Hezbollah and Iraqi Dawa operatives carried out seven bombings in Kuwait. The targets included Kuwait City’s primary airport, the American and French embassies, the premises of the Raytheon Corporation, a Kuwait National Petroleum Company oil rig and a government-owned power station. Six people were killed and nearly 90 wounded. Kuwait jailed 17 people in connection with the campaign, including Hezbollah members. The attacks demonstrated that the capital’s transport facilities and diplomatic sites could be struck as part of a wider campaign against Kuwait and Western interests.

Hezbollah activity in the Gulf did not end with the 1983 attacks. In March 1997, Kuwaiti intelligence arrested 13 Bahrainis and two Iraqis operating in Kuwait City under the name Hezbollah Gulf. Correspondence seized from their homes connected them with individuals in Damascus and Qom. Other evidence indicated that the operatives received directives from the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The arrests linked activity inside the capital to networks extending across the Gulf and to centers in Syria and Iran.

Concerns about covert cells persisted. At a 2007 Washington Institute symposium, Kuwaiti security specialist Sami al-Faraj described Kuwait’s experience of attacks linked to the Iranian regime and the possibility of secret cells in Kuwait City. Kuwait then had at least 65,000 Iranian expatriates. That population figure described residents, not membership in a covert network; the security concern concerned possible clandestine operatives. The earlier bombings, the Hezbollah Gulf arrests and the Iranian regime’s record of attacks on Gulf shipping gave Kuwaiti officials reason to treat the possibility seriously.

The city was also exposed to threats arising elsewhere in Kuwait. In 2015, an Islamic State suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque in the country, killing 27 worshippers. Kuwaiti security forces have investigated other suspected plans involving a truck of explosives intended for Camp Arifjan, south of Kuwait City, as well as attacks on security headquarters and oil facilities. These incidents and investigations formed part of the security environment around the capital, alongside the longer-standing concern about networks linked to the Iranian regime.

Air travel raised a different question in 2016. A sanctioned aircraft owned by Mahan Airlines and leased to Syrian Air operated flights to Kuwait City while the Iranian regime used air routes to support its operations in Syria. The Mahan-owned Airbus had landed in Damascus on August 4, 2016, before its transfer to Syrian Air. Between August 13 and October 21, it made 20 flights to Kuwait City and 30 to Dubai. Its presence on those routes showed how an aircraft connected to sanctioned carriers could continue serving Gulf destinations during the Syrian civil war.

Present day

Kuwait City contains established Christian worship sites alongside the institutions of Kuwait’s Muslim-majority society. Religious-freedom reports published from 2004 through 2008 identified its Catholic cathedral as a shared worship site for Latin, Maronite, Coptic Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Malabar and Malankara congregations. Reports from 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008 consistently recorded those six congregations using the cathedral. Greek Catholics, by contrast, worshipped in a rented house rather than at the cathedral. Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant communities also maintained worship facilities in Kuwait.

Religious practice has intersected with political Islam activism in public life. Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood lawmakers repeatedly campaigned against the Christmas tree at the Avenues, Kuwait City’s main mall. Political Islam activists also demanded the expulsion of the United States ambassador after the ambassador wished Jews a happy Hanukkah. Such campaigns made public religious expression a subject of parliamentary and political pressure. The prominence of political Islam in Kuwaiti public debate earned Kuwait City the epithet “Kandahar on the Gulf,” a description of that political climate rather than of the city’s residents as a whole.

Kuwait’s boycott of Israel produced a case involving travel through the capital. In 2016, Kuwait Airways canceled an Israeli student’s ticket for a Frankfurt-to-Bangkok flight with a layover in Kuwait City. The passenger sued in Germany. In 2017, a German court ruled that the airline could maintain its boycott of Israeli passengers in the case. The cancellation was discriminatory exclusion tied to Kuwait’s boycott of Israel; the dispute concerned the student’s Israeli nationality, not a routine change to a transit itinerary.

The state-run Kuwait City Book Fair became another setting in which Jew hatred received public visibility. From December 2018 through December 2019, the Anti-Defamation League monitored online catalogs for several state-run book fairs in the Arab world, including Kuwait City’s. Its review found books promoting Jew hatred listed for the November 2019 fair. Copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The International Jew appeared in the fair’s online catalog under Children’s Books. That classification gave the works especially troubling visibility. The documented finding concerns catalog listings; it does not establish how many copies were displayed or sold on site.

Together, the city’s churches, mall disputes, airline routes, book fair and national institutions show how Kuwait City serves as more than an administrative capital. Decisions made or contested there connect religious freedom, parliamentary power, regional security and Kuwait’s relations with Israel and neighboring states. Its development remains tied to the country’s political institutions and to the Gulf’s wider security and economic conditions.