Missile shortages, damage to US facilities: Pentagon watchdog issues first review of Iran war

By Davis Winkie, Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — The Pentagon’s official watchdog released a special report about the Iran war on Monday, representing the Defense Department’s first formal accounting of US equipment and facility losses from the conflict.

The inspector general, citing its communications with US Central Command, said that “Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan” during the war’s first months. The report, which covers the start of the war on February 28 through June 30, also acknowledged the depletion of key US munition stockpiles.

CNN previously reported the destruction of critical US assets such as missile defense radar installations in the war’s early days.

Those Iranian strikes contributed to significant changes in how US troops have traditionally operated in the region, the report said. CENTCOM “shifted personnel, assets and storage facilities” as they came under attack from Iran and its proxy forces.

Some of the moves included the withdrawal of Army medical evacuation helicopters from Iraq and Kuwait, the report said, meaning “most medical evacuations have been carried out by ground … to local treatment facilities.”

The destruction of the Navy’s regional hub in Bahrain, which acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao recently said Iran “blew the hell out of,” added to “significant challenges” with establishing “adequate naval bases and support ports,” the watchdog said. That led to the distant Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia becoming a sea logistics hub, stretching resupply cycles to 14-to-18 days in length.

The resulting intermittent shortages of supplies and interruption to the military’s regional mail system compounded the difficulties US sailors faced during record-long deployments to the Persian Gulf to support airstrikes on Iran and, in recent months, blockade its ports.

The changes to the military’s Middle East footprint may become permanent — military and intelligence community officials have quietly discussed the prospect of lasting cuts to US personnel and facilities in the region when the war eventually concludes, six sources previously told CNN.

The report, produced in collaboration with the State Department’s and US Agency for International Development’s inspector general offices, also covered US diplomatic activities in the region.

Damage by Iran to US diplomatic facilities in the Middle East caused roughly $184 million in damage, the report said. (Cost estimates for damage to US military sites were not provided.)

As CNN reported throughout the months of heavy fighting, those facilities in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates came under assault by Iran and its proxies.

In early March, the US Embassy in Riyadh was hit by two Iranian drones, causing extensive damage, including to the CIA station on the compound.

Also in early March, a drone targeted the US consulate in Dubai, damaging a utility building, according to the report. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time the drone had hit a “parking lot adjacent to the chancellery building.”

The US Embassy in Kuwait suspended operations entirely in March after being struck and damaged by Iranian drones. It resumed emergency operations for Americans in late June.

There were more than 600 attacks against US facilities in Iraq, a senior State Department official said in May. Those attacks caused the most costly damage — roughly $157 million.

Between February 23 and June 30, according to the report, up to 3,500 diplomatic personnel were out of the region as the majority of US posts were on authorized or ordered departure.

Within weeks of the start of the war in February, as US diplomatic facilities across the region came under attack, the department put Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on ordered departure, meaning that non-emergency personnel and all family members had to leave. Authorized departure means non-emergency personnel could choose to leave.

Most posts remain on “restricted operations,” which is not a return to normal staffing and instead is put in place after six months of ordered departure. Some diplomats have begun returning to the region, as have some family members.

Davis Winkie’s work at CNN is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). CNN retains full editorial control of the reporting.

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