Iranian strike destroys US E-3 Sentry ‘AWACS’, wounds soldiers in major blow to American air superiority in Gulf

In total, more than two dozen US troops were wounded in Iranian attacks on the Saudi airbase over the week, sources told the news agency. More than 300 US service members have been wounded in the war in West Asia. At least 13 have been reported killed.

What are AWACS

Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACs) can detect, identify, and track airborne enemy forces from afar. The development is pivotal as Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf countries aligned with the US have come under Iranian attacks since the conflict began.

According to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report from July 2024, there are eight persistent bases and 11 other military sites that the DOD can access in the region.

While Iran has maintained that the American and Israeli facilities in the region are its “legitimate targets,” various civilian installations and energy facilities have been targeted as well. Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery, the largest of its kind in West Asia, and its refinery in ‌the Red Sea port of Yanbu were also came under attack, in line with Tehran’s strategy of choking energy supplies from the Gulf.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia’s Prime Minister, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been urging US President Donald Trump to continue the war against Iran. The report said that Mohammed bin Salman argued the campaign presents a “historic opportunity” to reshape the region.

Why Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations haven’t sided with Iran

Saudi Arabia’s — and the larger Gulf Arab states’ — troubled relations with Tehran go beyond the ideological Shia-Sunni divide.

The Gulf has viewed the growth of Tehran’s conventional armed forces, its nuclear programme, and alleged hegemonic tendencies as threats since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Tehran had adopted a policy of “exporting” its revolution.

The concerns over security threats, ideological subversion, and regional instability posed by Ba’athism (in Iraq) and the revolution in Iran were among the factors that led to the creation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), an intergovernmental organisation that has largely remained aligned with Washington for its security needs.

In 2019, the Houthis, an Iran-backed Yemeni proxy group, attacked Saudi oil facilities, temporarily knocking out half of the kingdom’s oil output. In 2022, the group attacked the Abu Dhabi International Airport. In 2023, a China-brokered deal briefly restored diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Tehran.

However, after the US-Israeli assault on February 28, which killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran retaliated with drone and missile attacks on the Gulf states.