Iran claims it struck US radar in Bahrain, CENTCOM denies

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) denied the claim by Iran's Revolutionary Guards that they struck US-owned early warning radar facilities in Bahrain. In its statement on Friday, CENTCOM reported that two one-way attack UAVs sent by the Revolutionary Guards were shot down by US forces, and that no injuries or material damage occurred as a result of the attack. Al Jazeera's Washington correspondent Alan Fisher reported that the statements of both sides could not be verified by independent sources.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced that the operation was carried out in response to an airstrike on a telecommunications tower located in Hormozgan province in southern Iran. Iran's official news agency IRNA, in a report on Thursday citing officials, had announced that the port city of Sirik in Hormozgan province was targeted by enemy fire. In a statement published by the semi-official Tasnim News Agency, the Revolutionary Guards described the operation in Bahrain as a "serious warning" against the air provocations and oil smuggling activities it claims are continuing in the Strait of Hormuz. Fars News Agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, claimed that Iranian forces targeted and destroyed the US-owned radar facility.

According to Reuters, Iran's announcement was the first attack it has announced targeting US military assets in a Gulf country since the beginning of September. Al Jazeera's Tehran correspondent Resul Serdar said that the US had previously at times targeted telecommunications infrastructure at military facilities in southern Iran, and that Iran had avoided directly targeting US military assets in the region in response to these attacks.

Bahrain is one of the strategic centers of the US early warning and missile defense network in the Persian Gulf. The AN/TPS-59(V)3B radar, which entered service in 2007, was installed under a 43.6 million dollar agreement signed in 2004 in order to detect ballistic missile threats in advance and strengthen the country's air defense capacity. Open-source military inventory records show that the US-operated AN/TPY-2 radar was also present in Bahrain as of 2009. While the AN/TPS-59 has a 360-degree surveillance capability, the AN/TPY-2, which operates in the X-band, can track objects at a range of approximately 870 to 3,000 kilometers depending on the characteristics of the target and the operating mode. Data obtained from these systems helps missile defense elements such as Patriot, THAAD and Aegis to act in time against threats. Bahrain also hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and the US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT).