How Iran has damaged the US military footprint in the Middle East (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
Evidence on the damage inflicted to US military facilities in the Gulf during the war with Iran continues emerge, with Washington having acknowledged that facilities were hit across multiple countries. While the latest media figures say that at least 16 American bases in the region were struck, the Pentagon is apparently doing its best to conceal the destruction.
Within hours of the US launching ‘Operation Epic Fury’ on February 28, Iran unleashed retaliatory strikes against American military bases across the Middle East, with US officials confirming a growing number of sites hit and the Prince Sultan base in Saudi Arabia emerging as a focal point of the campaign.
Behind a veil of censorship, it’s increasingly clear that the damage may be far more severe than the Pentagon has admitted.
US leadership downplaying scope of destruction
In a report to a Congressional committee on Wednesday, senior Pentagon official Jules Hurst estimated that the war had cost Washington around $25 billion, most of this allegedly in expended munitions. War Secretary Pete Hegseth later refused to say whether the figure included repair costs to US bases.
Lawmakers have already blasted the estimate, calling it unrealistic in light of the Pentagon’s early reports, which said the war had cost around $11 billion in just the first six days.
However, the true price tag of the conflict is reportedly far higher. Factoring in the expense of repairing damaged US military facilities, the figure could be closer to $40-50 billion, CNN has reported, citing anonymous sources.
Iran’s retaliation for the initial attack saw it hit dozens of targets across US facilities in eight Middle Eastern nations, CNN has said. Warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft were reportedly struck.
In the early days of the conflict, an Iranian F-5 fighter jet bombed Camp Buehring in Kuwait, marking the first time in many years that a US base was struck by an enemy fixed-wing aircraft, according to the officials.
Washington delays release of satellite images
In mid-March, California-based Planet Labs company, which provides access to satellite imagery to government and business, extended delaying releasing satellite images of the damage to 14 days to preclude the use by “adversarial actors.”
On April 5, Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration had asked the company, along with several others working in the sector, to “voluntarily withhold images of designated areas of interest due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.” Some of Planet Labs’ images shared online exposed damage to US military sites.
US dragged by Israel into ‘unlawful war’ with Iran – Gulf state
The US has been drawn by Israel into an “unlawful war” against Iran and needs help to disengage, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi has said.
In an opinion piece published in The Economist on Wednesday, the Middle East nation’s top diplomat called on US allies in the region to “tell the truth” about the conflict and admit that Washington “has lost control” of its own foreign policy. “There are two parties to this war who have nothing to gain from it,” he wrote, referring to the US and Iran.
The US maintains close security and defense partnerships with six Gulf states – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman – and has a significant military presence in the region, including bases and naval facilities.
The escalation has had economic and security consequences for these states, with Iran retaliating against targets on their territory. Gulf officials have reportedly complained they were not consulted or warned before the US and Israel launched the campaign against Iran on February 28.
Albusaidi, who acted as a mediator in nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran, wrote that the parties had twice come close to a deal in nine months, noting that the airstrike campaign began immediately after the most substantive talks.
”Israel and America again launched an unlawful military strike against the peace that had briefly appeared really possible,” he wrote, adding that Iran’s retaliation was “inevitable.”
He argued that Washington’s greatest mistake was “entering a war that is not its own,” adding that Israel seeks regime change in Iran, while US interests lie in ending nuclear proliferation and securing energy supplies.
The US leadership must “decide where its national interests really lie, and act accordingly,” Albusaidi wrote. He acknowledged that while returning to talks may prove difficult for both sides, renewed negotiations, potentially mediated by the Gulf states, may provide a path forward.
Tehran has described the negotiations as a US-Israeli deception operation. Former US National Counterterrorism Center head Joe Kent said that Israel and allied media figures ran a “misinformation campaign” to push Washington toward war with Iran, according to his resignation letter published on Thursday.
Former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, also blamed the conflict on Israel, claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu “somehow convinced” US President Donald Trump “to support his views.”
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