Aug. 31, 2026Up to date Sept. 1, 2026, 8:49 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON – Iran has fielded a brand new era of ballistic missiles that may evade American air defenses and strike with far higher precision – a technological leap that army consultants say has broken the ring of U.S. bases throughout the Persian Gulf and left them extra weak than they have been in a long time.
The centerpiece of that shift is a extremely cellular ballistic missile Iran calls the Kheibar Shekan, or “Fortress Breaker,” which has a variety of 900 miles and a satellite-guided, maneuverable warhead.
Iran’s army has used the missile extensively in strikes on the U.S. naval hub in Bahrain and different American bases through the six-month conflict with the U.S. and Israel, in keeping with the Iranian authorities and confirmed in USA TODAY interviews with former U.S. army and intelligence officers and weapons analysts.
A few of these analysts imagine Iran used Fortress Breaker missiles within the July 17 strikes on the U.S. Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Al-Azraq, Jordan that killed three American service members − an assertion Iran itself has additionally made, in keeping with official authorities statements obtained by USA TODAY.
And on Aug. 31, an Iranian state-run outlet confirmed it used Kheibar Shekan missiles to hit Muwaffaq Salti − and the King Hussein air base in Jordan − in response to U.S. army assault on Iran’s Larak Island the earlier night time.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “focused the technical and upkeep infrastructure in addition to fighter-jet bases on the two amenities, inflicting important injury” on the bases, stated Iran’s IRGC-affiliated Tasnim Information Company.
Not like a standard ballistic missile that travels a set path defenders can monitor and attempt to intercept, the Kheibar Shekan can shortly change course within the remaining section of its descent, probably slipping previous air defenses and hitting targets with devastating precision, these sources stated.
Mounted on cellular launchers, the solid-fuel missile is extraordinarily tough to detect and destroy earlier than launch, permitting it to outlive American bombardment campaigns. It could actually simply attain U.S. and allied targets throughout the Center East, together with in Israel – and main American bases like Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia and the Al Dhafra Air Base within the United Arab Emirates.
“We designed whole air protection techniques based mostly on this understanding of what we thought they’d do,” Jonathan Hackett, a former Marine and U.S. intelligence officer, stated of Iran’s army capabilities.
And now, he stated, “they’re doing one thing totally different.”
“So now it’s important to change your defensive posture for missile protection in a manner that we hadn’t been doing beforehand. Ever,” stated Hackett, a fluent Farsi speaker who spent 20 years engaged on Iran-related army and intelligence points out of six U.S. embassies. He held positions on the U.S. Protection Intelligence Company, Nationwide Safety Company and Marine Forces Particular Operations Command earlier than retiring in October 2024.
In interviews with USA TODAY, Hackett and different consultants described how the Kheibar Shekan and different Iranian missiles have once in a while penetrated the layered defenses American forces have relied on for generations through the conflict towards Tehran that President Donald Trump launched collectively with Israel six months in the past.
Hackett believes Kheibar missiles have been central to the July 17 strike. Like different analysts, although, he stated U.S. officers have made that tough to corroborate by asking main industrial satellite tv for pc suppliers to black out imagery of delicate U.S. army websites within the area.
Iranian missiles have additionally prompted intensive injury to the U.S. Naval Help Exercise base in Bahrain − the regional hub of the Navy’s fifth Fleet − and different key U.S. army installations, in keeping with U.S. and allied statements, information experiences, satellite tv for pc imagery and USA TODAY interviews.
An impartial evaluation of satellite tv for pc imagery performed by The Washington Submit revealed that Iranian missile and drone strikes broken or destroyed no less than 228 buildings and items of apparatus throughout no less than 15 U.S. army websites within the Center East through the battle.
High administration officers, together with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and Trump himself, have insisted that the U.S. marketing campaign has destroyed Iran’s army capabilities and that U.S. air defenses have been profitable nearly all of the time − an assertion Iran vehemently denies.
“U.S. forces completely stay totally operational. We have now all the things required to strike on the time and place of the President’s selecting,” chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell stated in an Aug. 28 assertion to USA TODAY. “Throughout a number of combatant instructions, we now have already executed profitable operations whereas sustaining a deep, prepared arsenal to defend our individuals and our pursuits.”
Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez stated he had “nothing additional so as to add” on the matter.
The Pentagon didn’t reply to requests for touch upon Aug. 31 about whether or not the Fortress Breaker broke via U.S. defenses through the in a single day trade of army strikes and prompted injury.
Iranian strikes ‘completely’ lower off entry to fifteen US bases in Persian Gulf, former basic says
The menace from the comparatively new Iranian know-how helped immediate a public reckoning earlier this month, when retired four-star Military Gen. Barry McCaffrey said on X that the US had “in all probability completely misplaced entry to fifteen Persian Gulf bases” due to Iranian missile and drone strikes.
McCaffrey’s Aug. 22 put up has drawn greater than 3.8 million views, sparking a debate in U.S. army and intelligence circles over whether or not the Trump administration had sufficiently accounted for Iran’s missile counterpunch earlier than launching the conflict.
McCaffrey, who served within the U.S. Military for 32 years and retired as a four-star Normal, is extremely embellished for being wounded 3 times in fight. He led 26,000 troops into battle in Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 Gulf Struggle to liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion. Extra not too long ago, he has been a distinguished army analyst and critic of the Iran conflict.
McCaffrey was responding to a press release on X that Iranian counterattacks had all however destroyed the Bahrain base, which is the first anchor for U.S. naval energy within the Persian Gulf area. It additionally gives logistical, provide and operational help to U.S. and coalition ships, plane and personnel all through the Center East.
Because of that counterattack and others prefer it, McCaffrey wrote, “Iran [is] now poised to manage entry [to] the Gulf States. [The] US should negotiate new entry in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe.”
In interviews with USA TODAY, McCaffrey stated the Iranian missile functionality, particularly the Kheibar Shekan, is central to his conclusion that U.S. bases within the Gulf are too weak to remain the place they’re.
The missile, he stated, is especially agile, well-hidden by Iran, and one thing that U.S. army installations within the area cannot fully defend towards. Its capabilities, he stated, quantity to “a major change in know-how.”
“Because it begins reentry, it may change the affect level,” which, McCaffrey stated, “clearly complicates [U.S. military] calculations on methods to hit it” utilizing superior U.S. missile protection techniques.
All it takes, he stated, “is one, two or three of them” getting via, “and all of a sudden there is a probably catastrophic affect.”
Each McCaffrey and Hackett stated the Kheibar Shekan and different Iranian missiles, mixed with Iran’s aggressive use of refined drones, have prompted appreciable injury to U.S. Military, Navy and Air Pressure bases and smaller encampments all through the Center East.
A USA TODAY evaluation of congressional analysis, protection assessments and the general public file, together with quite a few interviews, helps that evaluation.
USA TODAY’s reporting additionally reveals the US’ vulnerability to Iranian missiles was not a shock to U.S. officers earlier than the conflict, nor was it a fluke.
McCaffrey stated Iran’s Kheibar strikes on Israel in 2024 have been largely ineffective, however newer variations of it have prompted intensive injury within the present conflict that the Pentagon has not acknowledged. That features U.S. radar and tactical communications techniques, missile-defense nodes and air-to-air refuelers, Airborne Warning and Management System planes “and different costly plane that have been destroyed whereas parked on an airfield,” he stated.
“The Iranians fired 6,000 drones and ballistic missiles and we intercepted 1,500,” McCaffrey stated. “So a bunch of them obtained via, and so they did immense injury.”
Iran’s missile know-how threatens US bases in Gulf
The U.S. vulnerability to Iranian missiles isn’t a secret; the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence companies have recognized about it for many years and quietly judged it to be manageable.
However then Trump provoked Iran into counterattacking after launching the conflict on Feb. 28. Inside minutes, Tehran started unleashing its arsenal towards army and authorities targets all through the area.
“It has been apparent for many years that you would be able to go in and conduct operations within the Gulf provided that the Iranians do not attempt to cease you,” McCaffrey informed USA TODAY. He stated Iran’s response on this conflict has been devastating not solely to U.S. army bases within the area but in addition to the U.S. allies who host them, prompting a wholesale reassessment of whether or not the bases are extra sitting geese than geostrategic army hubs going ahead.
A Wall Avenue Journal investigation concurred, saying in a June 25 report that the intensive injury from Iranian missiles and drones has the US reevaluating its whole footprint within the area, in keeping with U.S. officers accustomed to the deliberations.
How the Kheibar Shekan ‘maneuverable’ missile works
Iran first launched the Kheibar Shekan, “Breaker of the Kheibar” or citadel, in reference to a historic fortified oasis within the Arabian Peninsula, in 2022.
Jim Lamson, a CIA analyst from 1998 to 2021, stated the Kheibar Shekan’s steering system permits it to regulate its trajectory and maneuver quickly to strike inside 10 meters of a goal, a major achievement given how far it travels.
And its capacity to “maneuver within the terminal section” means it may “fully keep away from” two or three interceptors fired at it by opposing army forces, Lamson, who now tracks Iran’s missile program as a senior analysis affiliate on the James Martin Heart for Nonproliferation Research, informed USA TODAY.
Since 2024, Iran has stacked on incremental enhancements – probably with the assistance of Chinese language and Russian know-how – to make the missile a very deadly menace to the 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops within the area, Lamson stated.
The updates embrace improved satellite tv for pc steering, altered launch trajectories which might be tougher for missile-defense radar to foretell, higher resistance to digital jamming and coordinated barrages that blend ballistic missiles with swarms of drones, he stated.
On the similar time, U.S. defenses have been degraded, each by Iranian assaults on the US and allied radar and air protection websites throughout the area and as Washington depleted its personal interceptor stockpiles, in keeping with Lamson, McCaffrey and Hackett.
How Iran is utilizing missile to ‘maintain the battle towards the US and never give up’
Most of Iran’s missiles are nonetheless getting intercepted, Hegseth stated in a July listening to of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
At that listening to, Democrats demanded to know why Iran was capable of inflict a lot injury on U.S. bases. Hegseth had said months earlier that the administration had succeeded in its army marketing campaign to “obliterate Iran’s missile menace.”
“We by no means anticipated they’d cease having capabilities to shoot,” Hegseth testified. “The query is at scale towards an opponent like the US of America.”
However Lamson, McCaffrey and Hackett stated sufficient missiles are getting via to considerably injury U.S. bases and the infrastructure of U.S. allies within the area like Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
“They’ve been capable of adapt each technologically – and operationally and tactically – to enhance their effectiveness towards the U.S. and to successfully exploit U.S. vulnerabilities so as to have the ability to maintain the battle towards the U.S. and never give up,” Lamson stated.
Fortress Breaker could have prompted lethal strike at US air base in Jordan
On July 17, Iranian ballistic missiles and drones hit the large Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, within the desert 60 miles northeast of Amman.
Two troopers have been killed within the assault, in keeping with U.S. Central Command: Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas; and 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Seashore, Hawaii.
The Pentagon stated on July 21 it had recognized the stays of a 3rd soldier who was believed to have died within the assault, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, a sign operations help specialist.
Gonzales and Feehan have been active-duty troopers supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, which assists companion forces in securing an enduring defeat of ISIS.
Business satellite tv for pc imagery captured days later confirmed the size of the assault. There have been a number of affect websites – two plane hangars have been struck and certain destroyed and drone amenities have been hit – and the pictures confirmed heavy injury to housing items the place service members slept. Observe-up Iranian missile strikes have been reported later that month.
Hackett, who as soon as labored out of the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, described the July 17 strike as a “reside fight take a look at” of the Kheibar Shekan towards U.S. bases in Jordan. He stated the Kheibar is very harmful as a result of its maneuverability permits it to strike “dynamic” targets, together with individuals and army belongings that moved on the final minute to dodge them.
That features priceless plane, he stated, “and these enormous gasoline bladders sitting round with tons of jet gasoline in them. These could be struck now by this weapon and trigger mass explosions and casualties.”
The three analysts agreed that it can’t be ascertained with specificity how a lot injury Iranian missiles just like the Kheibar Shekan have finished to U.S. and allied pursuits within the area, given the Pentagon’s lack of transparency in regards to the strikes.
“The extra necessary reality is that there was this implication that Israel, Jordan [and] Saudi Arabia are secure,” together with different U.S. allies that host American bases like Qatar and Bahrain, McCaffrey stated. “And clearly they don’t seem to be.”
(This story has been up to date so as to add new data.)
