Project Freedom lasted less than 48 hours. Trump announced it on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon — a plan to escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz under U.S. military protection — and by Tuesday he had suspended it, citing “great progress” in Pakistani-mediated negotiations with Iran. The diplomatic cover was thin. The operational reality was simpler: Saudi Arabia pulled the plug.

According to two U.S. officials who spoke to NBC News, Riyadh informed Washington that U.S. aircraft would not be permitted to operate from Prince Sultan Air Base southeast of Riyadh, nor fly through Saudi airspace to support the escort mission. Kuwait followed. With those two pieces of geography removed, the defensive air umbrella that Project Freedom required to function could not be constructed. Fighter jets, refueling tankers, and support aircraft all depend on ABO — access, basing, and overflight — from regional partners. In this part of the world, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are the critical basing nodes, Kuwait the critical overflight corridor, Oman essential for both overflight and naval logistics. The operation needed all of them. It got none.

Kuwait remembers. Of all the Gulf states whose oil revenues depend on Hormuz transit, Kuwait is the one with the most direct experience of what it looks like when a regional power decides that its neighbors’ sovereignty and economic interests are subordinate to its own strategic ambitions. The Iraqi invasion of August 1990 and the seven-month occupation that followed were not a Hormuz closure, but they were something equivalent in economic and political terms: the abrupt elimination of Kuwait’s ability to govern itself and export its oil. The institutional memory of that period shapes Kuwaiti foreign policy in ways that are distinct from the other Gulf states that have not experienced occupation.