The Iranian military announced on Monday that it launched an attack on the US’s Al Udeid base in Qatar in response to the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The attack was first reported by Axios reporter Barak Ravid, who cited Israeli sources that said Iran fired at least 10 missiles at the US base in Qatar. An Israeli official said another missile was fired toward Iraq, and other reports say US air defenses were activated over the Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq.
“This base is the headquarters of the Air Force and the largest strategic asset of the US terrorist army in the West Asia region,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said of the US base in Qatar.
The IRGC said Iran would not “leave any attack on its territorial integrity, sovereignty, and national security unanswered under any circumstances.”
The Qatari Foreign Ministry issued a statement that said Qatar’s air defenses “successfully thwarted the attack and intercepted the Iranian missiles” and that there were no injuries or deaths caused by the attack.
The reported missile launch comes after Fox News and other outlets said that an Iranian attack on US assets in the region was “imminent” and Qatar announced that it was closing its airspace, signaling the US has at least a few hours’ notice that the barrage was coming.
The New York Times reported that Iran had notified Qatar of its plans to attack in order to minimize casualties, signaling Tehran is seeking de-escalation with the US. In 2020, after the US assassinated Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran launched a similar attack on a US base in Iraq, which the US didn’t respond to.
A White House official told CNN that the US was expecting an Iranian response and claimed President Trump didn’t want more military engagement in the region. “We knew they’d retaliate. They had a similar response after Soleimani,” the official said.
This story is breaking and will be updated as it develops
