Iran attacks damaged 20 US military sites since start of war, satellite images show

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - DUBAI — Iranian strikes have damaged 20 US military sites since the start of the US-Israeli war against Tehran in February, a BBC analysis of satellite images and videos showed Monday.

Iran has attacked key facilities across eight countries in the Middle East since February 28, causing extensive damage to state-of the-art air defense systems, refuelling aircraft and radars.

Tehran has targeted both US bases and shared military facilities in retaliation to the US-Israeli strikes across Iran and Lebanon over the past three months.

The Pentagon has said it has hit more than 13,000 targets in Iran since the start of Operation Epic Fury.

While the White House has repeatedly said Iran’s military capability has been largely wiped out, analysts argue that damage observed at US facilities suggests that Iran’s counterstrikes were both more precise and more extensive than American officials have publicly acknowledged.

Among the significant losses were three advanced anti-ballistic missile battery systems at Al Ruwais and Al Sader airbases in the UAE, as well as Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan, the report said.

The US is only known to operate eight of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, which are deployed at bases around the globe and cost around $1 billion to manufacture. Each battery needs a crew of about 100 troops to operate it while the interceptors it fires cost around $12.7 million per round.

Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, the ex-head of the Irish Defense Forces, said the batteries are at the core of a "highly complex" regional defense network that cannot be "quickly or easily replaced".

Elsewhere, Iranian strikes also hit Ali Al Salem Airbase and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. Analysts at MAIAR identified destroyed fuel storage bunkers, aircraft hangars, and troop accommodation in satellite imagery, indicating the base was struck multiple times during the conflict.

At Camp Arifjan, defense intelligence firm Janes reported significant damage to satellite communications equipment, the analysis showed.

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated since the US-Israel attack on Iran. A ceasefire took effect April 8 through Pakistani mediation, but subsequent talks in Islamabad failed to produce a lasting agreement.

Since then, the two sides have continued exchanging proposals and counterproposals in an effort to resume direct talks and end the conflict.

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has sought to highlight his military's success in striking US facilities. In a statement last Tuesday he claimed the Middle East was no longer a "safe place" for American bases.

A US defense official declined to comment on BBC findings, citing "operational security reasons".

The US has sought to limit satellite analysis of the conflict by requesting Planet, a major provider, to impose an "indefinite" restriction on new images of Iran and most of the Middle East. The company justified the move, saying it wanted to ensure its images were not used "by adversarial actors to target allied and NATO-partner personnel and civilians".

BBC has used satellite imagery from other international providers combined with older images from Planet to track the damage caused by Iranian attacks.

The extent of damage caused to US facilities is difficult to quantify, but a May estimate by the Pentagon put the total cost of Operation Epic Fury at $29 billion with much of that likely to be spent on "repair or replacement costs for equipment" destroyed in the conflict.

The report also found that at least 42 aircraft — including F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and an A-10 attack plane — have been destroyed or damaged since February.

By comparison to the expensive hardware used by the US military, Iran has reportedly made use of cheap, easily replaceable drones in its attacks on targets across the Middle East.