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Tulsi Gabbard Warned Pete Hegseth; Iran Destroyed the US Base in Bahrain Anyway
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In the wake of reports on the suicide attempts on the USS Lincoln, there have been more stories about the damage Iran did to the Navy base in Bahrain. I’ve already noted this NYT story.The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln’s supply problems began soon after the first day of the war, as Iranian missiles and attack drones fell on a Navy base in Bahrain.
The Iranian attack, retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Tehran, destroyed much of the base. And as it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub that the Navy has relied on for decades.
Military Times had this op-ed last week.
Extensive damage to one of our most significant forward bases in the Middle East is likely to have profound tactical and strategic repercussions that are only now coming into focus.
The idea that this broad functioning hub, built over decades, was significantly degraded in the space of a few days by a regional player is unimaginable.
I have fond memories of Bahrain both from past port visits, where it provided much-needed rest and relaxation, decent shopping and fitness options, and from my time as a government trainer when I flew over for shipboard training once every six months. I always felt safe there.
That NSA Bahrain is now virtually uninhabitable, with families left in limbo, as described in recent reporting, is difficult to grasp.
[snip]
The potential loss of NSA Bahrain is effectively the equivalent of losing an aircraft carrier. It could not have come as a surprise that Iran would attack it in retaliation, yet it — and those living and working there — were left exposed and the facilities inadequately protected from Tehran’s ballistic missiles.
Navy Times has an update, reporting on a meeting from yesterday.
The Navy’s highest-ranking officer told sailors during a town hall on Monday that it would be a while before the service would return to its main logistics hub in the Middle East after it was heavily damaged early in the Iran war.
Answering a displaced service member’s question about retrieving personal goods from the base they previously called home, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said the Navy would not be using Naval Support Activity Bahrain for the foreseeable future.
“We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” Caudle said. “I just want to be completely honest with that.”
Because of this sudden focus, there’s this general belief that no one reported on the attack on real time.
Except NYT did — in what remains, to this day, one of the most important stories about the war (I’ve repeatedly pointed to the satellite image of Prince Sultan Airbase and argued that whatever intelligence help Iran had in targeting these attacks likely killed Benjamin Pennington).
Video verified by The Times showed that an Iranian one-way attack drone struck a radome on Saturday in the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain. The base is the United States’ primary hub for coordinating naval operations in the Middle East.
Satellite imagery taken of the headquarters the following day showed that at least one additional radome was destroyed.
The two demolished structures were AN/GSC-52B SATCOM terminals, which play a key role in facilitating high-capacity and near real-time communication for the U.S. military.
NYT wasn’t the only outlet that cataloged the damage to communications facilities around the Gulf, but its visual journalism team has always been one of the best.
Less than a week after that story, Planet Labs put a hold on satellite images covering the region. Subsequent reporting made it clear the request came (unsurprisingly) from the US government.
I gotta believe we were the adversaries DOD tried to keep that information from. Iran was getting its satellite data from Russia. We, the public, were the ones cut off from real-time information about how much damage Iran had done.
This is the import of this detail from a recent WSJ story.
Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard outlined assessments from America’s intelligence apparatus. According to people familiar with the meeting, she told Trump that killing Iran’s supreme leader would likely usher in a more hard-line regime open to acquiring nuclear weapons. Tehran would rush to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the global energy market. And it would strike U.S. forces and partners in the Middle East, prompting questions about American resolve and reliability with allies.
Tulsi Gabbard provided specific warnings about strikes on US forces and partners in the Middle East, to say nothing of Hormuz.
And yet Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s military, stripped of expertise in the name of his white supremacist project, failed to secure Bahrain and other key bases. And that’s why his top advisors say the US cannot continue to fight this war in Iran.
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