Tehran/Washington, DC: Iran was able to cause unprecedented damage on at least 16 US installations across eight countries, thanks to a Chinese satellite it acquired in 2024.
Tehran secretly acquired the satellite, known as the TEE-01B. This was a massive upgrade from its own satellites, the Financial Times reported.
That meant that Tehran went from looking at low-quality images to high-resolution ones. This was imagery almost as detailed as America’s own. The US, for the first time, fought an adversary with satellites that capture such detail, it is believed.
An investigative report by CNN has revealed the kind of damage inflicted by Iran on US bases and equipment across the Middle East.
Camp Buehring, the once-bustling American micro-city in the Kuwaiti desert is nearly empty and heavily damaged after strikes by Iranian missiles and drones, CNN reported. This was one of America’s largest military hubs in the Gulf.
The report says that some of the assets targeted are virtually unusable now.
These were rapid, targeted strikes using advanced technology, unlike anything they had witnessed in the past, US sources told CNN. One of Iran’s main targets was the Boeing E3 Sentry, which gave the US a huge amount of visibility over the Gulf. This aircraft, worth nearly USD 500 million, is out of production.
The giant “golf balls”, known as radomes, which protect satellite dishes vital for data transmission, were also targeted by Iran. According to the report, highlighted by ANI, Iran destroyed all but one of the radomes less than a month into the war.
They also hit radar systems – highly sophisticated, expensive, difficult to replace, and critical to air defence. A second US source, a congressional aide familiar with damage assessments, described these as the most cost-effective of the targets. “Our radar systems,” they said, “are our most extensive and our most limited resource in the region.”
US allies in the region are now in a dilemma. On one hand, Iran’s show of force makes the US presence in the region even more necessary to Gulf security, while on the other, US military installations are making these countries legitimate targets.
“The war has shown Saudi Arabia – the US’s longest-standing Arab ally – that the alliance with the US cannot be exclusive and it is not, impregnable,” a Saudi source has been quoted by CNN as saying.
This becomes evident when one considers that the war room at Qatar’s Al-Udeid airbase, the theatre command and control hub for US air power across 21 nations, was struck not just once, but twice, causing significant damage.
