- Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao admitted Iran severely damaged the U.S. Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain.
- The strikes forced the Navy to evacuate roughly 1,300 military family members in August.
- The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier lost its port access and could not dock at the base.
- A Wall Street Journal review found extensive damage to the command headquarters and other buildings, although no one was killed.
- The Pentagon is now weighing whether to rebuild the base or scale back its Middle East footprint.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao confirmed this week that Iranian forces inflicted severe damage on the United States' primary naval logistics hub in the Middle East, raising fundamental questions about America's ability to project power in the region. The strikes against Naval Support Activity Bahrain, which is home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, occurred over recent months during escalating conflict between Washington and Tehran, leaving the installation so compromised that the Navy evacuated approximately 1,300 military family members in August amid the conflict and advised against their return.
Acting secretary details destruction of key naval facility
Cao told The Epoch Times on Sept. 9 that Iranian forces "blew the hell out of Bahrain," referring to the sprawling base that served as the Navy's nerve center for Middle Eastern operations. The damage has effectively denied U.S. warships access to the port, leaving the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with "no place for them to pull in," Cao said. The carrier's nearly nine-month deployment has reportedly strained crew morale, according to U.S. media reports, before it finally docked in Thailand earlier this month.
When asked about the possibility of returning, the acting secretary confirmed he has established a task force evaluating whether to rebuild the facility.
Extent of damage exceeds early assessments
Satellite imagery, social media footage and interviews with service members reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showed the command headquarters, roughly a dozen other buildings and two satellite communications terminals were heavily hit, though no one on base died in the strikes. The Pentagon had not previously acknowledged the full scope of the destruction.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told personnel during an August 31 town hall that the Navy doesn't plan to return to the base soon.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded to Cao's admission on X, writing: "We appreciate the candor of Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao. 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."
Regional bases face similar vulnerability
The Bahrain facility isn't alone in taking damage. Iranian forces also struck the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, known as Al-Azraq, this week, damaging several U.S. military aircraft. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said its missiles hit deployment sites for F-35, F-16 and F-15 fighter jets. While Jordanian forces reported intercepting 18 of 20 missiles, CBS News confirmed an A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft lost a wing and eight F-15s sustained light damage.
By May, the Congressional Research Service counted 42 U.S. military aircraft lost or damaged in the conflict overall. Since February, 18 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 800 injured across eight Middle Eastern countries where Iran has targeted American facilities.
The admission marks a rare moment of candor from the Pentagon, which has seldom detailed the scale of damage inflicted on its forward-deployed forces. NSA Bahrain had long served as the nerve center of U.S. naval operations in the region, supporting ships at sea and thousands of military and civilian personnel—and it played a central logistics role during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
With Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declaring the Middle East "no longer a safe place" for U.S. bases, the Navy faces a costly choice: rebuild vulnerable installations or rethink its footprint in a region where American forces are increasingly exposed to precision strikes—a vulnerability critics say was foreseeable given years of open-ended U.S. entanglement in Middle East conflicts far from home.
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