The 90-minute coordinated attack on two embassies, the country's main airport, and petro-chemical plant was more notable for the damage it was intended to cause than what was actually destroyed.
What might have been "the worst terrorist episode of the twentieth century in the Middle East" killed only six people because of the bombs' faulty rigging.
Only five people were initially killed (two Palestinians, two Kuwaitis, and one Syrian)[4] in large part because the driver did not hit the more heavily populated chancellery building and more importantly, only a quarter of the explosives ignited.
[10] One of those convicted by a court in Kuwait in February 2007 was Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, more commonly known by his nom de guerre as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was a member of Kata'ib Hezbollah and Iraq's parliament and military commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
[14] Between 1983 and 1984, Kuwait provided $7 billion in financial assistance and was second to Saudi Arabia in aiding Iraq,[15] Massive destruction and loss of life in Kuwait would also have provided an example to the other oil-rich, population-poor, Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf, also helping Iraq against its larger, non-Arab, anti-monarchist revolutionary Islamic neighbor.
America had halted all shipments of arms to Iran, and extended $2 billion in trade credit to Iraq in "Operation Staunch" in 1983.
[17] The blasts were said to have taken the Kuwaiti government "completely by surprise" and left it dumbfounded, terrified and shaken to their core that such a well-organized terrorist operation could have taken place under their noses.
[18][19] According to the Monday Morning gazette, the hitherto relaxed nation was transformed into a "police state," with roundups of foreign workers, numerous roadblocks, identity checks, and guardsmen under orders to "shoot whoever refused to stop or be searched.
His failure to make progress in freeing the convicted terrorists is thought to be the reason that he himself was kidnapped and spent five years as a hostage.
Chief Kuwaiti government spokesman Abdel Aziz Hussein called the bombings "the first concentrated Iranian operation to export the revolution and destabilize the Persian Gulf after Iran failed to infiltrate the Iraqi [war] front.
[10] Over the next several years, Hezbollah perpetrated a string of kidnappings and bombings with the goal of forcing the Kuwaiti government to free the al-Dawa prisoners.
[43] In July 1987, car bombs exploded in a fashionable shopping district, killing two people and blowing the facades off several stores.
[43] In October 1987, Kuwait's oil terminal was hit by an Iranian Silkworm, which was observed to have originated from the Faw peninsula.
The attack prompted Kuwait to deploy a Hawk missile battery on Failaka Island to protect the terminal.
During the course of the standoff women, children and Muslims were released and two American officials from the US Agency for International Development, Charles Hegna and William Stanford, were shot dead and dumped on the tarmac.
[48] One American official wondered if the surrender was not preplanned: "You do not invite cleaners aboard an airplane after you have planted explosives, promised to blow up the plane, and read your last will and testament.
"[49] The US State Department announced a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of those involved in the hijacking but made no military response.
Six or seven Lebanese men[50] (including Hassan Izz-Al-Din, a veteran of the TWA 847 hijacking[51]) armed with guns and hand grenades forced the pilot to land in Mashhad, Iran, and demanded the release of 17 Shiite Muslims guerrillas held in Kuwait.
Lasting 16 days and traveling 3,200 mi from Mashhad in northeastern Iran to Larnaca, Cyprus, and finally to Algiers, it is the longest skyjacking to date.
Two passengers, Abdullah Khalidi, 25, and Khalid Ayoub Bandar, 20, both Kuwaitis, were shot dead by the hijackers and dumped on the tarmac in Cyprus.