Iranian Missile Strike at Saudi Base Wounds Dozens of Troops
4 min learnUp to date: Mar 29, 2026 05:14 PM IST
An American E-3 Sentry AWAC was broken in an Iranian missile barrage on Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base on Saturday, which left greater than a dozen US personnel wounded. Visuals of the broken plane and particles have surfaced on social media.
The Sentry, carrying the serial quantity 81-0005, was amongst a number of plane housed on the base. Iran fired six ballistic missiles and 29 drones on the facility, injuring not less than 15 troops, 5 of them critically.
The airbase, 96 kilometres (60 miles) from the Saudi capital Riyadh, got here underneath assault not less than two extra instances final week, together with a strike that wounded 14 US personnel, AP reported. Earlier within the battle, the US suspended embassy operations within the nation following an assault.
In complete, greater than two dozen US troops had been wounded in Iranian assaults on the Saudi airbase over the week, sources informed the information company. Greater than 300 US service members have been wounded within the warfare in West Asia. At the very least 13 have been reported killed.
What are AWACS
Airborne Warning and Management Methods (AWACs) can detect, determine, and monitor airborne enemy forces from afar. The event is pivotal as Saudi Arabia and several other different Gulf nations aligned with the US have come underneath Iranian assaults because the battle started.
In keeping with a Congressional Analysis Service (CRS) report from July 2024, there are eight persistent bases and 11 different army websites that the DOD can entry within the area.
Whereas Iran has maintained that the American and Israeli services within the area are its “reliable targets,” varied civilian installations and power services have been focused as nicely. Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery, the biggest of its type in West Asia, and its refinery in the Purple Sea port of Yanbu had been additionally got here underneath assault, in keeping with Tehran’s technique of choking power provides from the Gulf.
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Final week, the New York Occasions reported that Saudi Arabia’s Prime Minister, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmanhas been urging US President Donald Trump to proceed the warfare in opposition to Iran. The report mentioned that Mohammed bin Salman argued the marketing campaign presents a “historic alternative” to reshape the area.
Why Saudi Arabia and different Gulf nations haven’t sided with Iran
Saudi Arabia’s — and the bigger Gulf Arab states’ — troubled relations with Tehran transcend the ideological Shia-Sunni divide.
The Gulf has seen the expansion of Tehran’s typical armed forces, its nuclear programme, and alleged hegemonic tendencies as threats because the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. After the institution of the Islamic Republic, Tehran had adopted a coverage of “exporting” its revolution.
The considerations over safety threats, ideological subversion, and regional instability posed by Ba’athism (in Iraq) and the revolution in Iran had been among the many components that led to the creation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), an intergovernmental organisation that has largely remained aligned with Washington for its safety wants.
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In 2019, the Houthis, an Iran-backed Yemeni proxy group, attacked Saudi oil services, briefly knocking out half of the dominion’s oil output. In 2022, the group attacked the Abu Dhabi Worldwide Airport. In 2023, a China-brokered deal briefly restored diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Tehran.
Nevertheless, after the US-Israeli assault on February 28, which killed Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran retaliated with drone and missile assaults on the Gulf states.
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