Iran's Guards say they targeted a US radar in Bahrain; claim unverified

Note

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Friday, Nov 13, that it had targeted a US early-warning radar in Bahrain, Reuters reports, in a dispatch opened here via The Straits Times. Al Jazeera, in a report credited to Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters, carried the same Iranian claim. This is an Iranian claim, not a confirmed strike on a US radar.

Iran International said the claims of an attack and of the radar's destruction could not be independently verified. Reuters and Al Jazeera said there was no immediate comment from the United States or Bahrain. No later official comment from Washington or Manama was found in the outlets opened for this note.

The Guards said the action was in retaliation for what they described as an air attack on a telecommunications tower in Iran's southern Sirik county, in Hormozgan province, according to Iranian state media, Reuters reports. Al Jazeera said the radar claim came hours after Iran's state news agency IRNA, citing official sources, reported that the port city of Sirik was hit by "enemy fire" on Thursday. Those Iranian accounts do not, by themselves, establish who carried out any attack in Sirik or how much damage was done. Iran International likewise said available reports did not independently establish the cause or extent of damage in Sirik.

The IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency said the IRGC's Aerospace Force had "targeted and destroyed" the radar installation, Al Jazeera reports. A statement carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency called the claimed strike a "serious warning" to stop what the Guards said were aerial provocations and oil smuggling in the Strait of Hormuz, and said the aerospace force stood "in full readiness to engage without limits" if such actions recurred, Al Jazeera reports. Reuters called this the first such claim of an attack on American military assets in a Gulf country since early September; Al Jazeera attributed the same point to Reuters.

Al Jazeera noted that Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Manama, and that the base was hit in February. It did not identify a specific site for the radar the Guards claimed to have targeted on Friday.

Separately, Iran's army navy said Friday it had shot down a US-made MQ-1 drone off the coast of Sirik, in the Kouhestak area, Mehr News Agency reports, citing the navy's public relations office. Times Now, citing IRNA, reported the same Iranian claim. That drone claim has not been independently confirmed in the outlets opened for this note.