Iran launched a missile and drone attack on a United States military base in Saudi Arabia on Friday, wounding more than a dozen American service members and damaging several aircraft as the conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran entered its second month.
The attack on Prince Sultan Air Base involved at least six ballistic missiles and 29 drones, according to the Associated Press. Five of the injured troops were reported in serious condition, with soldiers inside a building at the base when it was struck.
Among the aircraft damaged were multiple US Air Force refueling planes and an E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control aircraft. A photo showed significant damage to one of the E-3s. Iran released satellite imagery it said showed burning aircraft at the installation.
Prince Sultan Air Base, located roughly 60 miles from the Saudi capital Riyadh, is operated by the Royal Saudi Air Force and hosts the US Air Force’s 378th Air Expeditionary Wing. Iran has repeatedly targeted it since the war began. A separate attack on the base earlier in the week injured 14 people, though officials described that strike as less severe.
Army Sergeant Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, had died days after being wounded in an earlier attack on the same base on 1 March. In total, 13 US service members have been killed since the conflict began, including six in an Iranian strike on a US facility in Kuwait in the opening hours of the war and six in a separate crash. More than 300 American troops have been wounded overall, most of whom have returned to duty.
US Central Command commander Admiral Brad Cooper said on 25 March that Iranian missile and drone launches had fallen by more than 90 percent since the start of the conflict on 28 February, and that over two-thirds of Iran’s missile, drone, and naval production facilities had been damaged or destroyed. The Saudi base attack, however, demonstrated that Iran retains the capacity to strike key targets even with its arsenal significantly degraded.
On the diplomatic front, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said Tehran had agreed to allow humanitarian aid and agricultural shipments to move through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that normally handles around a fifth of the world’s oil shipments and nearly a third of global fertilizer trade. The concession, brokered through the United Nations, would represent the first significant opening at the shipping chokepoint since the war began.
Also on Friday, US President Donald Trump, speaking at a Miami event hosted by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, called on Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalise relations once the conflict with Iran concludes, describing the moment as ripe for progress on his long-standing Abraham Accords agenda. Significant obstacles remain, including Saudi Arabia’s demand for a credible path to Palestinian statehood before any normalisation of commercial and diplomatic ties with Israel.
Pakistan separately announced it would host a foreign ministers’ meeting involving Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, framing the gathering as part of a broader diplomatic effort to de-escalate tensions in the region.
