A Bahrain-based United States military installation has sustained severe damage during recent months of fighting with Iran, the acting secretary of the US Navy has said, prompting Washington to evaluate what to do with its headquarters in the Middle East. “They blew the hell out of Bahrain,” Hung Cao said in an interview with The Epoch Times on Wednesday, in a rare official admission of the impact of the conflict on a key US facility amid escalating tensions in the Gulf, six months into the US and Israel’s war on Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded to Cao’s acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on the US facility. “We appreciate the candor of Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao,” the official wrote on X. “Our powerful Armed Forces did indeed ‘blow the hell out of the 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain,’ as well as other bases supporting US aggression.” US bases across the Middle East have come under repeated attack by Iran, raising questions about whether they can be sustained. Iranian strikes overnight on Tuesday also hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, known as the Al-Azraq base, damaging multiple US military aircraft. Imagery obtained from open sources indicates the US’s Naval Support Activity (NSA) base in Bahrain sustained heavy damage in retaliatory strikes after the US and Israel launched air attacks across Iran in late February.
The base was repeatedly targeted between February and June, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal, which analysed satellite imagery, social media footage and conducted interviews with service members, concluded that Iranian strikes caused extensive damage which the Pentagon did not immediately acknowledge. The command centre at the base and at least a dozen other buildings within the facility were hit hard, the investigation found. Cao said the Navy was evaluating what to do with the base now, including whether to repair it. “I have a task force that’s looking at that,” he told The Epoch Times.
Admiral Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s most senior uniformed officer, said earlier this month that the NSA Bahrain would not resume service “anytime soon” because of the damage it had sustained. Cao said damage to the base also affected operations involving the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, leaving the crew with “no place for them to pull in”. The nearly nine-month extended deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East has triggered a mental health crisis among the crew, with some sailors trying to jump overboard, according to US media reports. It finally docked at Laem Chabang, Thailand, earlier this month.
Until it was heavily damaged, the NSA Bahrain base was home to the US Fifth Fleet and the US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), serving as the Navy’s main logistics hub in the Middle East. The base, located a few kilometres from the capital Manama in Juffair, has been described by US news outlets as the nerve centre of US naval operations. According to its website, the NSA Bahrain provided “services and support to ships at sea, remote sites throughout the region, and military and civilian personnel living in Bahrain”. The installation was also the primary base in the region for Navy activities during the US military invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had launched “devastating” missile strikes on US forces stationed at the Al-Azraq base, which hosts US military assets and personnel, overnight on Tuesday. Missiles “struck the maintenance, preparation, and deployment sites of F-35, F-16, and F-15 fighter jets, as well as their shelters, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy”, the IRGC said in the statement reported by the semi-official Tasnim news agency. The Jordanian Armed Forces said 18 of 20 missiles had been intercepted, with two falling in “open areas”. US forces fired about 30 Patriot interceptor missiles to counter the missiles, amid reports of depleting stockpiles of US air defence interceptors and other missiles.
However, the strikes still damaged multiple US military aircraft, CBS News reported. One A-10 Thunderbolt, an attack aircraft known as the Warthog, was struck and lost a wing, the news outlet said, citing sources. Eight F-15s sustained light damage and were put back into service, according to people who spoke to CBS News anonymously because they were not authorised to speak publicly. The Iranian strike on the base in Jordan was carried out after the US attacked five Iranian tankers in and around the Strait of Hormuz, in retaliation for Iran targeting a US Navy warship.
The Muwaffaq Salti Air Base near Al-Azraq is located nearly 100km (62 miles) northeast of Amman. Its official name is a tribute to a Jordanian fighter pilot, Lieutenant Muwaffaq Salti, who was killed in combat with Israel in 1966 in the Battle of as-Samu. The sprawling base, which has two runways, makes it an important asset for the US – and a target for Iran. Tehran has claimed strikes on the Al-Azraq base more than 10 times between March and September.
On June 10, the IRGC said its long-range missiles had destroyed several targets at the Al-Azraq airbase, including hangars and command centres. However, authorities in the countries targeted said all projectiles were intercepted without casualties. In the following weeks, Iran claimed to have hit the Al-Azraq base multiple times, inflicting heavy damage to US assets there. On July 17, Iran said it had hit US military aircraft stationed at the Al-Azraq base with ballistic missiles and drones, claiming to have destroyed several refuelling aircraft and fighter jets.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) later confirmed that two US service members had been “killed in action” in the Iranian attack, while one was missing and four were injured. According to a May report from the US Congressional Research Service, 42 US military aircraft had already been lost or damaged in the conflict by that time. Since the Iran war began with US-Israeli strikes in February, 18 US service members have been killed and more than 800 have been injured. Iran has targeted key US facilities in eight countries in the Middle East since the start of the war.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei claimed the Middle East was no longer a “safe place” for US bases. Images and videos analysed by the BBC in June showed that Iran had damaged at least 20 US military sites since the start of the war, causing millions of dollars of damage. Iranian strikes heavily hit US refuelling and surveillance aircraft at Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia, as well as fuel storage bunkers, aircraft hangars and troop accommodation at the Ali Al Salem Airbase and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, BBC reported. Three state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile battery systems, which cost about $1bn each to manufacture, were also damaged at the Al Ruwais and Al Sader airbases in the UAE and Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan.
