WASHINGTON — American military bases and other equipment
in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.
Iran swiftly retaliated after the U.S. and Israel attacked on Feb.
28, hitting dozens of targets across U.S. military bases in seven
Middle Eastern countries. Those attacks struck warehouses,
command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of
aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by
the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
In the initial days of the war, an Iranian F-5 fighter jet bombed
the U.S. base Camp Buehring in Kuwait, despite the base having
air defenses, a rare breach that marked the first time an enemy
fixed-wing aircraft has struck an American military base in years
, according to two of the U.S. officials.
The U.S. bases that came under attack are home to thousands of
American troops, and in some cases their families, though they
were largely cleared out in the days and hours before the U.S.
and Israel went to war with Iran.
The Pentagon has not detailed the extent of the damage to U.S.
military bases publicly or, according to the U.S. officials, to
members of Congress.
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