Leaked photos and firsthand accounts from U.S. bases across the Middle East reveal an Iran war far uglier than Americans have been shown, from burning planes to troops digging their own foxholes, according to a new report.
MeidasTouch, working with VALOR Media Network, published dozens of photos and videos Thursday showing damage at U.S. installations in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, along with accounts from service members, contractors and military families. The sources spoke anonymously, saying they have been threatened with disciplinary action for speaking out.
One source told MeidasTouch the situation is “so much worse than people realize.”
MeidasTouch noted that some of the claims could not be independently verified and that the Pentagon has not confirmed several of the losses described, including a C-17 cargo plane a source says was destroyed.
Some of the damage has surfaced before. An E-3 Sentry surveillance plane, part of the Air Force’s dwindling fleet of airborne command centers, was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia that injured more than 10 service members, two seriously, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported. By late March, roughly 20 U.S. aircraft had been damaged in the air war, the magazine reported.
In Jordan, sources described months of near-constant fire at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. Three soldiers, Staff Sgt. Angel Rampersad, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales and 1st Lt. Tyler Feehan, died after a July 17 Iranian attack on the base, and four others were injured, according to the Pentagon. A later Pentagon accounting of the war listed their deaths under “overseas operations” rather than the Iran campaign, Task & Purpose reported.
“They were taking incoming fire so frequently that the alarms couldn’t keep up,” one account from Muwaffaq Salti Air Base said. Sources told MeidasTouch they could hear service members calling for help from inside the flames during the July attack but, because of an inadequate emergency response, could not reach them.
In the UAE, service members said they had no warning the war was coming and no shelters once it did. Some retreated to hotels and ordered takeout for food. Others dug foxholes.
Military families in Bahrain, home to the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, said planes were waiting to evacuate them but the Pentagon refused, and they were told it would make things look bad at home. The airport was then struck, they said, and some families paid tens of thousands of dollars to escape on their own.
“As an American citizen, I felt completely abandoned by my own government,” said the wife of a U.S. contractor who fled through Saudi Arabia at her own expense.
The U.S. went to war with Iran on Feb. 28. The report follows earlier leaked photos that showed damage at U.S. bases.
