Iranian airstrikes that were launched to retaliate for the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli attack on the country have hit almost 230 U.S. military assets across the region, a review of satellite imagery by The Washington Post shows.
The damage, the Post reported, exceeds that reported by the Defense Department.
The report comes a week after the department’s head bean-counter low-balled the cost of the war during testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.
In late March, The New York Times revealed that Iranian strikes had wrecked 13 military bases across the Middle East.
But this latest report suggests that Iran hit back hard. And, it shows, Trump’s war planners underestimated Iran’s ability to defend itself and inflict costly damage.
The airstrikes “have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment,” the imagery showed:
The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.
While imagery of the region is difficult to obtain, the newspaper scrutinized more than 100 images that Iran released. It validated 109 against the European Union’s low-resolution Copernicus system and the Planet system’s high-resolution imagery. While the Post excluded some images, none was manipulated.
“In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran,” the newspaper continued:
In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.
In other words, Iran had no trouble hitting targets:
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.
Some of the damage may have occurred after U.S. troops already left the bases, making protection of the structures less vital. Cancian and other experts said they do not believe the attacks have significantly limited the U.S. military’s ability to conduct its bombing campaign in Iran.
Hellbound and Down 