Yes, Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet at Naval Support Activity Bahrain in the Juffair district of Manama, and on February 28, 2026, Iran targeted the base directly as part of a sweeping retaliatory operation dubbed “Operation Epic Fury.” The strikes came hours after coordinated U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran, and Bahrain was among four Gulf states hit simultaneously, alongside Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE. The Bahrain Defense Force reported intercepting 45 incoming missiles and 9 drones, though some projectiles penetrated defenses, destroying two main radar domes and several large structures at the naval facility. This was not a surprise scenario. Intelligence agencies had warned for years that any open hostilities between the United States and Iran would put Bahrain squarely in the crosshairs.
A CIA report shared with Navy Times as far back as January 2020, following the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, noted that analysts had long suspected Tehran would order missile attacks on the American military headquarters in Bahrain if conflict erupted. Iran-backed militias declared U.S. personnel stationed there “legitimate targets” at that time. Six years later, those warnings materialized. This article examines why Bahrain became such a critical node in the U.S. military posture in the Persian Gulf, what happened during the February 2026 strikes, the civilian toll that followed, and what the broader implications are for Gulf security architecture going forward.
Table of Contents
- Why Does Bahrain Host the U.S. Fifth Fleet and What Makes It a Target for Iranian Retaliation?
- What Happened During the February 28 Strikes on NSA Bahrain?
- The Civilian Toll in Bahrain That Got Far Less Attention
- How Did Bahrain’s Defenses Compare to Other Gulf States Under Attack?
- The Intelligence Warnings That Preceded the Strikes
- Bahrain’s Unique Vulnerability as a Small Island Host Nation
- What the Bahrain Strikes Mean for the Future of Gulf Basing
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Does Bahrain Host the U.S. Fifth Fleet and What Makes It a Target for Iranian Retaliation?
The American naval presence in Bahrain stretches back to World War II. The U.S. Navy originally occupied the site of a British Royal Navy installation known as HMS Jufair, and the territory was formally transferred to the U.S. government in 1971. The Fifth Fleet itself was first established in 1944 during the war, stood down in 1947, and then reactivated in 1995 with its permanent headquarters in Bahrain. Today, approximately 25,000 military personnel serve afloat under the Fifth Fleet’s command, with roughly 3,000 support personnel stationed ashore. The fleet’s area of responsibility covers about 2.5 million square miles, spanning the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and parts of the Indian Ocean.
That geographic footprint is precisely what makes Bahrain such a strategically valuable and simultaneously vulnerable location. The base sits just across the Persian Gulf from Iran, well within range of Iranian ballistic missiles and drone systems. For decades, the implicit bargain was that Iran would not directly attack Gulf state hosts of American forces because the consequences would be catastrophic. The February 2026 strikes shattered that assumption. When Iran launched Operation Epic Fury, it targeted not just Bahrain but also Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE, striking at the entire network of American forward-deployed military infrastructure in a single coordinated salvo. The comparison to earlier Iranian provocations is instructive. In January 2020, after the Soleimani killing, Iran launched missiles at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq but deliberately avoided hitting Gulf state hosts directly. The 2026 strikes represented a fundamentally different calculus, one where Tehran decided the political and military costs of restraint outweighed the risks of escalation across the entire region.
What Happened During the February 28 Strikes on NSA Bahrain?
On February 28, 2026, Iran launched a combination of ballistic missiles and armed drones at Bahrain as part of its broader retaliatory campaign against U.S. and Israeli targets across the Gulf. The Bahrain Defense Force reported intercepting 45 missiles and 9 drones, a significant volume of fire that tested the country’s air defense systems to their limits. However, not everything was stopped. Satellite imagery analysis conducted after the strikes revealed that two main radar domes and several large structures at Naval Support Activity Bahrain were destroyed. The damage, while visually dramatic in satellite photos, did not cripple U.S. operations according to official assessments. U.S.
Central Command stated that the Iranian retaliatory strikes caused no U.S. casualties or combat-related injuries and that damage to American installations was minimal and did not affect offensive operations against Iran. However, that official framing warrants scrutiny. The destruction of radar domes at a major naval headquarters is not trivial, and “minimal” damage to military planners may still represent significant degradation of specific capabilities, particularly surveillance and early warning systems. CENTCOM’s emphasis on continued offensive capability does not necessarily mean defensive or intelligence-gathering functions were unaffected. It is also worth noting the broader operational tempo. As of March 7, 2026, CENTCOM reported that U.S. forces had struck more than 3,000 targets in Iran since the campaign began on February 28. The sheer scale of that number suggests the Bahrain headquarters, even if damaged, was part of a command infrastructure that had already dispersed or shifted to redundant systems before the Iranian strikes landed.
The Civilian Toll in Bahrain That Got Far Less Attention
While Pentagon briefings focused on the military picture, civilians in Bahrain paid a real price. Three buildings in Manama and Muharraq were hit by drone attacks and falling debris from intercepted missiles. Footage circulated widely showing a drone striking the Era Views Tower, a civilian residential building. The images were jarring for a country that had largely avoided direct conflict despite its proximity to regional tensions for decades. The casualty reports trickled out over several days. On March 1, a shipyard worker was killed by falling debris. On March 2, an Asian worker was killed when debris from an intercepted missile struck a foreign vessel in Salman Industrial City.
That same day, Bahrain reported 32 people wounded in an Iranian drone attack, with four in critical condition including children who required surgery. These are not abstract statistics. Bahrain is a small island nation with a population under two million. The psychological impact of missiles and drones falling on civilian neighborhoods, even as byproducts of interceptions, fundamentally changed the security reality for ordinary residents. This civilian dimension raises difficult questions about the costs Gulf states bear by hosting American military infrastructure. The workers killed were not military personnel. The children in surgery had no role in geopolitical calculations. Yet their proximity to a high-value military target made them collateral participants in a conflict between much larger powers.
How Did Bahrain’s Defenses Compare to Other Gulf States Under Attack?
Bahrain intercepted 45 missiles and 9 drones, but the fact that some projectiles penetrated defenses and caused both military and civilian damage suggests the defense systems were strained. Comparing this to the other targeted states is useful, though complete data from Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE has been slower to emerge. What is clear is that Iran chose to hit all four simultaneously, a strategy designed to overwhelm regional air defense networks by forcing each country to defend independently rather than concentrating assets. The tradeoff for small Gulf states is stark. Hosting American forces provides a security guarantee and significant economic benefits, including military sales, infrastructure investment, and diplomatic leverage. But it also paints a target on the host nation.
Bahrain’s geographic reality makes this tradeoff especially acute. The country is a small archipelago roughly 50 kilometers from the Iranian coastline at its closest point across the Gulf. Flight time for a ballistic missile from Iranian launch sites to Bahrain is measured in minutes, not the kind of timeline that allows for leisurely decision-making. Before February 2026, the conventional wisdom held that Iran would avoid directly striking Gulf state hosts because doing so would turn the entire Gulf Cooperation Council against Tehran. That deterrence model failed. Whether it failed because Iran calculated the situation was already past the point of no return, or because Tehran believed the Gulf states would blame Washington rather than Iran for drawing fire to their territory, remains a subject of intense debate among regional analysts.
The Intelligence Warnings That Preceded the Strikes
The February 2026 attacks did not come without warning, at least not in the intelligence community’s assessment. The CIA report provided to Navy Times in January 2020 had explicitly noted that analysts long suspected U.S.-Iranian hostilities would trigger orders from Tehran to launch missile attacks on the American military headquarters in Bahrain. That warning was issued in the context of the Soleimani killing, when Iran-backed militias publicly declared U.S. sailors in Bahrain “legitimate targets.” The limitation of that intelligence, however, was timing. Knowing that Iran would eventually target Bahrain if hostilities escalated is different from knowing when and how.
The six-year gap between the 2020 warning and the 2026 strikes illustrates a persistent problem in threat assessment: accurate strategic warnings can breed complacency when they do not materialize immediately. Military planners in Bahrain undoubtedly had contingency plans, but the question is whether those plans adequately accounted for the volume and simultaneity of the actual attack, which hit four countries at once. There is also the question of what Bahrain’s own government knew and when. As a sovereign nation hosting foreign military forces, Bahrain presumably received intelligence briefings about escalating tensions in the days before February 28. Whether Bahraini civilian authorities had adequate time or resources to prepare civil defense measures for their population is a question that deserves more public scrutiny than it has received.
Bahrain’s Unique Vulnerability as a Small Island Host Nation
Bahrain’s situation is distinct from the other targeted Gulf states in important ways. Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE all have significantly larger landmasses and populations, providing more geographic dispersal for both military and civilian assets. Bahrain is approximately 780 square kilometers, smaller than many American cities.
A missile or drone that misses its military target on an island that small has a high probability of hitting something civilian. The strikes on Manama and Muharraq, along with the drone impact on Era Views Tower, illustrate this geographic reality in painful terms. For Bahrain, there is no hinterland to absorb errant munitions.
What the Bahrain Strikes Mean for the Future of Gulf Basing
The February 2026 attacks on NSA Bahrain will almost certainly accelerate conversations already underway about the vulnerability of fixed military installations in the Gulf. The U.S. military has been exploring distributed basing concepts and mobile command platforms for years, and the demonstrated ability of Iran to hit a major headquarters, even with most incoming fire intercepted, strengthens the case for those alternatives. At the same time, the Fifth Fleet’s headquarters has been in Bahrain for over three decades, and the institutional, diplomatic, and logistical inertia of that arrangement is enormous.
For Bahrain’s government, the calculus has shifted. The kingdom must now weigh the continued benefits of hosting the Fifth Fleet against demonstrated, not theoretical, risks to its civilian population and infrastructure. That does not mean Bahrain will ask the Americans to leave. But it does mean the terms of that arrangement, including air defense investments, civilian protection measures, and the diplomatic positioning Bahrain adopts relative to both Washington and Tehran, are now being renegotiated under very different conditions than existed before February 28, 2026.
Conclusion
Bahrain’s role as host of the U.S. Fifth Fleet placed it at the intersection of American power projection and Iranian retaliation in the most direct way possible on February 28, 2026. The strikes destroyed radar infrastructure at NSA Bahrain, killed civilian workers, wounded dozens including children, and shattered the long-held assumption that Gulf host nations would be spared direct Iranian attack.
While U.S. Central Command maintained that offensive operations were unaffected, the human and material costs to Bahrain itself tell a more complicated story. The broader lesson is that forward-deployed military infrastructure carries real risks for host nations, risks that are easy to minimize in peacetime but impossible to ignore once missiles are actually in the air. Bahrain’s experience will shape Gulf security arrangements for years to come, and the questions it raises about the obligations powerful nations owe to smaller allies who bear disproportionate consequences deserve honest, ongoing public discussion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where exactly is the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquartered in Bahrain?
The Fifth Fleet is headquartered at Naval Support Activity Bahrain in the Juffair district of Manama. The site originally served as a British Royal Navy base known as HMS Jufair before being transferred to the U.S. government in 1971.
How many U.S. military personnel are based in and around Bahrain?
Approximately 25,000 military personnel serve afloat under the Fifth Fleet’s command, with roughly 3,000 support personnel stationed ashore in Bahrain.
Were any American service members killed in the February 2026 Iranian strikes on Bahrain?
According to U.S. Central Command, Iran’s retaliatory strikes caused no U.S. casualties or combat-related injuries. However, civilian workers in Bahrain were killed and dozens were wounded, including children.
What did Iran call its retaliatory operation against Bahrain and other Gulf states?
Iran dubbed the operation “Operation Epic Fury.” It was launched on February 28, 2026, following coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran earlier that same day.
How many Iranian missiles and drones did Bahrain intercept?
The Bahrain Defense Force reported intercepting 45 incoming missiles and 9 drones, though some projectiles penetrated defenses and caused damage to both military and civilian targets.
Was Bahrain the only Gulf state attacked by Iran?
No. Iran simultaneously targeted Bahrain, Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem Air Base, and the UAE’s Al Dhafra Air Base, striking at American military infrastructure across four Gulf states at once.