Unnamed military personnel and American officials have told the New York Times that Iran’s campaign of drone and missile strikes American bases in the Persian Gulf region has made most of them unusable. “So now much of the land-based military is, in essence, fighting the war while working remotely, with the exception of fighter pilots and crews operating and maintaining warplanes and conducting strikes,” the Times reported on March 25.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has urged people to report these new locations as it hunts for the dispersed troops. The Iranian strikes and threats haven’t stopped the U.S. war, but they have made it harder for the U.S. military to prosecute it and have raised questions about the Trump administration’s preparations for the war.
Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage, the Times continues. In Qatar, Iran struck Al Udeid Air Base, the regional air headquarters of U.S. Central Command, damaging an early-warning radar system. In Bahrain, a one-way Iranian attack drone struck communications equipment at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. At Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Iranian missiles and drones damaged communications equipment and several refueling tankers.
