On-the-ground reporting from Kuwait alarms CNN anchor: 'War ramping up?'

President Donald Trump claimed the Iran war is already winding down with the U.S. prevailing, but on-the-ground reporting in Kuwait shows the conflict may be trending in the opposite direction.

The 79-year-old president told supporters at a campaign-style rally in northern Kentucky that joint U.S.-Israeli military operations had "virtually ⁠destroyed Iran," and "we won," but within hours of those statements Iran struck two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and bombed locations throughout the Middle East, as CNN's Nic Robertson reported from the region.

"Just take a look at the apartment above me here, residential building that completely ripped apart, blown-out debris strewn on the ground around here," Robertson told "CNN News Central." "I can see a shoe over there, twisted metal, over here two people were injured here, two civilians. Kuwaiti government officials tell us were injured here they've been taken away for treatment. There were multiple rounds of attempted attacks and attacks on Kuwait overnight. The sirens going off, defensive fighter jets put up in the air overnight, but I want to tell you something here that I think gives our viewers a real clue to how much of a threat Iran is and how their attacks are working."

Robertson directed the photographer to turn around and show the Persian Gulf in the near distance.

"We're looking at the Persian Gulf, Iran is 50 miles behind me across the water there," Robertson reported. "So that drone flew in from there straight into the building here, a couple of hundred miles that way is the Strait of Hormuz. Just further north from here, closer to in Iraq, two tankers, oil tankers, hit by an explosive device last night, both set on fire. So right in the northern end of the Persian Gulf here now you have Iran attacking oil tankers here, a few hundred miles to the south, trying to choke off the Strait of Hormuz. They are putting this whole region into a sort of a an economic chokehold. The Iranians are turning the sea here, the water, the Persian Gulf effectively into a war zone, not just the buildings around here, Kuwait, as well."

Robertson and the photographer again pivoted back to the city, where the camera captured imagines of downed power lines and damaged buildings.

"The attack that happened just a few hours ago in Kuwait, targeting and hit Kuwait International Airport," Robertson said. "Structural damage, we're told no one injured. But that threat coming straight across from Iran, very close, very real."

Anchor Kate Bolduan agreed the images and reporting did not indicate the war was winding down.

"That is one terrifying, the damage that you see just behind you, but also terrifying, the perspective that you're offering viewers of just how close the threat is and how the battlefield is coming right to the shores of all of Iran's gulf neighbors right now," she said, "and what is unfolding does not seem a war winding down, but rather a war ramping up."

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