How Damaged Are US Middle East Bases?
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It's Friday, September 18th. We have a new look at the war in Iran, and it's not pretty. We start here. Stunning images from American service members in Iran shed new light on the conflict.
And you see an Air Force jet blown in half, destroyed by Iranian fire on March 27th.
Alarm bells are going off in Washington. We'll tell you about it. Congress passes a new sanctions bill, but it's tariffs that have some Democrats worried.
They just don't like the idea of giving the president that additional authority.
We've got the impact it has on both Iran and Russia. And is the Kennedy Center reno going to become a demo? That the president was looking at a poster board-sized photo of what appeared to be the Kennedy Center in ruins. Why the president is apparently considering tearing down a D.C. landmark. From ABC News, this is Start Here. I'm Mike Daboski. Hey, happy Friday. Brad's out again today, but I've got you covered. As the war in Iran has dragged on, we've heard a lot of mixed messages from the Trump administration. First, this was a combat operation that was only going to take a few weeks. This is a
short excursion into something that should have been
done for 47 years. Now, more than six months later, there's still confusion over things like who controls the Strait of Hormuz and how open the Iranians are to negotiating over things like nuclear weapons. But one consistent message we've heard from the Trump administration is this. And while American strikes on Iranian targets have been ratcheting up in recent weeks, so have the Iranian strikes on American targets. And now ABC News has learned the toll those strikes have taken on U.S. bases may be much greater than we originally thought.
What new images reveal the extent of damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East?
Let's start the day with ABC's chief White House correspondent, Mary Bruce. Mary, thanks for talking to me. ABC was able to get its hands on some pictures from American bases that have been attacked by Iran. Just tell me what these pictures show.
Mike, these pictures really do give us a rare look at the toll that this war is taking on American military assets in the region. We were able to obtain these images, which were sent to us by active service members who we are not naming. But it does show the extent of the damage. And you see an Air Force jet blown in half, destroyed by Iranian fire on March 27th at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, buildings at that same air base destroyed. just completely torn apart. There's another image that shows the extensive damage from an Iranian attack at a U.S. Army base in Kuwait. The date of that is unclear. And then at another base in Kuwait, we see this image of these containerized housing units that have just been completely shredded.
So it is sounding some alarm bells and raising a lot of questions about American defenses and whether the administration is being forthcoming with the American people.
Right. Raises a lot of questions for the Pentagon and the Defense Department specifically. Have we heard from them in this at all?
Well, we certainly have reached out to the Pentagon about these images, and so far they're declining to respond. But keep in mind that since the early days of this war, Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth and the administration have downplayed Iran's attacks on U.S. assets in the region.
It takes two to tango. You understand that we hit them very hard on something that was unrelated. And so they were responding. But
it was just earlier this week that the Pentagon's watchdog did acknowledge in a report that Iranian strikes have damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases and saying dozens of U.S. aircraft were destroyed or damaged.
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