Pentagon watchdog reports $3.7B in Iran strike equipment losses

House votes third time to force Trump to end Iran conflict

CBS News obtained photographs from active US military personnel that the BBC published on September 16, showing widespread damage to US facilities in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait from Iranian strikes. The BBC said it had not independently verified the undated images.

One photograph shows a Boeing E-3 Sentry — an early-warning radar aircraft used to detect and track potential targets at long range — at Prince Sultan Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia, about 62 miles southeast of the capital Riyadh. The aircraft appears ripped in half, with its tail section crumpled into a tangled mass of metal. BBC Verify previously confirmed a similar photograph, apparently of the same radar aircraft, in March. At the time, a US official told Reuters that 12 US personnel had been wounded, two of them seriously, in the Iranian attack on the air base.

A pair of images reportedly from Camp Buehring in Kuwait shows crumpled trailers and a large tent-like structure reduced to shreds, with smoke billowing from the site. A separate undated photograph from Camp Buehring shows a car reportedly destroyed in an Iranian strike. Another photograph shows a four-storey building damaged at Camp Arifjan, also in Kuwait. Damage to satellite communications hardware at Camp Arifjan had been reported in March, though the BBC said it was not clear whether the image of the building was from that earlier attack.

The photographs appeared one day after the Pentagon’s inspector general released a report finding that Iranian strikes had “damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict.” The watchdog documented $3.7 billion in equipment losses and reported that “dozens of US aircraft were destroyed or damaged,” including five refuelling aircraft that were “damaged or destroyed on the ground in Saudi Arabia by Iranian munitions.”

Overall, the United States spent $33.4 billion on the war through June 29, the inspector general’s report said. The BBC reported that the White House and US Central Command had been approached for comment.

One member of the military, who was not named by CBS, said: “This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public. We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.”

The disclosures come as political pressure on the White House to end the conflict has mounted. On Tuesday night, the US House of Representatives voted for the third time to end the war in Iran, approving a measure that would force Trump to end US military action without congressional approval. The vote passed with the help of several Republicans and is likely to be the final such House vote ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The conflict began on February 28, when the US and Israel launched joint attacks on Iran. Since then, Iran has repeatedly attacked US bases and allied states in the Gulf, as well as Israel.

Trump has denied that the United States faces a weapons shortage stemming from the war and said information “leakers” were being “hunted down,” according to BBC reporting.