The launch of a U.S. Army MIM-104 Patriot lengthy vary air defence system in Bahrain has been recognized as the reason for dozens of civilian casualties on March 9, with researchers on the Middlebury Institute of Worldwide Research confirming prior assessments that the missile which precipitated the casualties was launched from a U.S. Army battery positioned roughly seven kilometres southwest of the Mahazza neighbourhood on Sitra island. U.S. and Bahraini authorities sources had initially attributed the casualties to an Iranian drone strike. The report contributes to the rising controversies surrounding using Patriot methods within the U.S.-led struggle effort in opposition to Iran, which started on February 28 when U.S. and Israeli forces launched full scale assault on the nation with the goal of forcefully toppling its authorities.
Within the preliminary hours of hostilities footage confirmed Patriot methods in Qatar persistently failing to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles, with footage exhibiting three interceptors launched, moderately than the usual two, indicating an consciousness of the decrease than marketed likelihood of kill. In mid-March a crew member from a civilian ship crusing by way of the Gulf of Oman filmed two Iranian ballistic missiles placing oil services on the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah, and failed efforts by native forces to make use of a Patriot system to intercept them additionally utilizing three interceptors in opposition to every goal. PAC-3 interceptors value roughly $4-6 million {dollars}, with export purchasers in Arab world usually paying nearer to $6 million, bringing the price of every interception try in opposition to Iranian brief vary missiles costing below $400,000 to round $18 million.
The capabilities of the U.S. and its strategic companions’ regional air defence community has been severely diminished because the outbreak of hostilities, with Iranian precision strikes having destroyed the only real AN/FPS-132 radar based mostly exterior the U.S., which was positioned in Qatar, and two AN/TPY-2 radars from THAAD methods in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to a number of decrease worth radar methods. The U.S. Army’s stockpiles of interceptors for the Patriot system had been already severely depleted when the nation initiated assaults on Iran, and had been confirmed in mid-2025 to have fallen to only 25 p.c of the quantity deemed essential by the Pentagon. To strengthen its positions within the Center East, the U.S. has withdrawn each interceptors and full air defence methods from bases throughout a lot of the world, most notably from South Korea, with this occurring each within the months previous assaults on Iran, and within the following weeks.
