Iran attacks damage 20 US military sites since start of war, satellite images show

Iran has damaged 20 US military sites since the start of the war, according to satellite images and videos analysed by BBC Verify, suggesting the attacks are more extensive than publicly acknowledged. Iran has targeted key facilities across eight countries in the Middle East since the end of February, causing millions of dollars of damage to state-of the-art air defence systems, refuelling aircraft and radars. The Pentagon says it has hit more than 13,000 targets in Iran since the start of Operation Epic Fury.

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, claimed on Tuesday that the Middle East was no longer a "safe place" for American bases. A US defence official declined to comment on BBC Verify's findings, citing "operational security reasons". The US has sought to limit satellite analysis of the conflict by requesting Planet to impose an "indefinite" restriction on new images of Iran and most of the Middle East. The facilities are in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain and Oman. Some analysts place the number of bases hit as high as 28.

Among the valuable hardware damaged were three state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile batteries systems at the Al Ruwais and Al Sader airbases in the UAE and Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan. The US is only known to operate eight of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, which cost around $1bn to manufacture. Each battery needs a crew of about 100 troops to operate it while the interceptors it fires cost around $12.7m per round. Iranian strikes have also heavily hit US refuelling and surveillance aircraft at Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia. One aircraft was identified by