Iran ‘blew the hell’ out of US Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain, admits US Navy Secretary

Acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao has admitted that Iranian forces “blew the hell” out of the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, a rare on-the-record concession that the Pentagon’s flagship naval hub in West Asia was shattered by the Islamic Republic’s retaliatory strikes.

Cao made the remarks in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times reporter Ryan Morgan, who published the comments on Thursday.

Morgan wrote that while open-source analyses had long shown extensive damage to Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the acting secretary’s language was the first direct high-level US acknowledgment of the scale of the blow.

Fox News Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffin called it a “pretty stunning admission,” noting that no senior American official had previously said as much on the record.

Cao’s nomination to become the full-time Navy secretary remains stalled in the Senate.

The acting secretary said the destruction left the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with “no place for them to pull in.”

Asked whether the US Navy would have to return to Bahrain to sustain high-intensity deployments of that kind, Cao replied only that “I have a task force that’s looking at that.”

The US Navy’s top uniformed officer, Adm. Daryl Caudle, said earlier this month that the service would not go back to the Bahrain base “anytime soon.”

The USS Abraham Lincoln spent nearly nine months at sea, including about 200 days in a combat zone, before making its first port call in Thailand this month amid reports of poor conditions and low morale on board. Supply lines have been stretched as far as Diego Garcia because the Fifth Fleet’s home port is no longer usable.

The admission cuts against months of official American messaging. Washington had claimed that Iranian strikes on the base did not “significantly impact operations.”

Satellite imagery and later reporting told a different story that the Fifth Fleet headquarters building was rendered unusable, at least a dozen other structures and two satellite communications terminals were hit, and repair estimates ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Families were evacuated. Some 1,500 sailors were pulled out of Bahrain after the opening days of the war.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced repeated missile and drone attacks on the Fifth Fleet compound at Mina Salman and related facilities, saying command buildings, air-defense systems, drone storage, support equipment and fuel tanks were among the targets. Tehran has insisted throughout that bases used to attack the Islamic Republic are not sanctuaries.

The contrast with White House claims that Iran’s attack capabilities had been all but destroyed is now being drawn even in US media.

Heavy Iranian retaliation spurs US plans for West Asia pullback: Report

The US military is considering reducing its presence across West Asia after months of Iranian missile and drone strikes inflicted heavy damage on American bases, according to a report.

Analysts have pointed to a pattern in which Iranian strategic hits are first denied in Washington and only conceded weeks or months later, leaving a prolonged false impression that the war is going Washington’s way. Cao’s remark is the latest example.

The Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama has for decades been the nerve center of US naval operations across the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and surrounding waters.

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