KUWAIT CITY (Dispatches) – 
Kuwait’s Interior Ministry announced Saturday that security forces arrested 125 people wanted on security-related charges in a nationwide sweep. 
The General Department of Public Security said the campaign across all governorates produced 203 security and traffic measures, including the arrest of 25 individuals unable to prove their identities. 
The ministry did not specify the nature of the security charges or provide any evidence linking those detained to specific threats.
The announcement came as Kuwait continues a citizenship revocation campaign that has drawn condemnation from international human rights bodies. 
In early October, six decrees published in the official gazette stripped citizenship from 415 people, including prominent billionaire businessman Mahmoud Haji Haider Abdullah, whose nationality was revoked on the stated ground that he had previously held Iranian citizenship. 
The decrees also affected family members who had acquired citizenship through him.
The scale of the campaign is far larger than the October decrees suggest. By August 2025, independent monitors recorded more than 50,000 people stripped of their citizenship, representing roughly 4.6 percent of Kuwait’s citizen population.
The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls reported that between 40,000 and 60,000 individuals had been affected as of August 2025, with women disproportionately targeted—particularly those who had naturalized through marriage to Kuwaiti men.
Amnesty International’s annual report documented that Kuwaiti authorities “continued a campaign of citizenship revocations,” with “tens of thousands of people, mostly women,” stripped of their nationality. 
Under Kuwaiti law, foreign wives were required to renounce their original nationality to secure citizenship; when their new status was revoked, they were left stateless, with bank accounts frozen and access to healthcare blocked because the system is linked to civil ID cards.
The crackdown on alleged Iranian connections has extended beyond citizenship. In August, Kuwait’s Education Ministry revoked the license of the country’s only Iranian private school and ordered its immediate closure, with parents told to transfer their children elsewhere. 
Since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began in late February, Kuwait has established a new State Security Court that issued rulings against 204 defendants in April and May for expressing sympathy with Iran or “disseminating false news,” with sentences ranging from suspended punishment to 10 years in prison. 
A Kuwaiti journalist was detained without warrant for 52 days solely for reposting war-related images published by international media.