U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have come under repeated attack in recent weeks, including a rocket attack on al-Asad Air Base in Iraq on Monday that reportedly injured five U.S. military personnel and contractors. The renewed strikes, which began in July, mark a resumption of a low-level war between America and Iran’s proxies in the Middle East that had ebbed earlier this year.
“We can confirm that there was a suspected rocket attack on August 5th against U.S. and coalition forces at Al Asad Airbase, Iraq,” a spokesperson with U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, the umbrella organization overseeing the Middle East, told The Intercept by email. “Base personnel are conducting a post-attack damage assessment.”
The latest attack raises renewed questions about the vulnerability of U.S. bases in the region. Since Israel’s war in Gaza began last October, attacks by Iranian proxy forces on these sites have killed or wounded at least 145 U.S. personnel on Middle Eastern bases.
U.S. and allied forces have been attacked more than 170 times during the Gaza war: 102 times in Syria, 70 in Iraq, and once in Jordan. The latter assault, in January, ignited a round of escalatory U.S. counterattacks against Iranian-allied targets that led Iran to rein in its proxies. As Israel has widened the Gaza war in recent weeks, with more provocative attacks in Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, Iran’s partners have resumed attacks on U.S. outposts across the region.
While America’s enemies have demonstrated, to lethal effect, their knowledge of the locations of U.S. bases in the region, the Pentagon’s public affairs office claims to have no list of such outposts. “I don’t have any inherent information,” Defense Department spokesperson Pete Nguyen told The Intercept earlier this year. CENTCOM refused to comment on the locations of its bases, citing several reasons, including partners’ reluctance to admit to the presence of U.S. troops in their countries. “[O]ur relationship with the host nations is one of the reasons why this information is not made public,” CENTCOM spokesperson Vail A. Forbeck told The Intercept.
Undeterred, The Intercept launched its own investigation and developed a list of more than 60 U.S. bases, garrisons, or shared foreign facilities in the Middle East. These sites range from small combat outposts to massive air bases in 13 countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
At least 14........