Azraq airbase

Iran struck the base for the first time on 10 June 2026, part of its first three-country salvo alongside Bahrain and Kuwait; the Revolutionary Guard claimed an F-35 hangar destroyed, while Jordan reported all five incoming missiles intercepted with no casualties, an account the two sides have never reconciled. A second strike on 9 July, ten missiles against eight intercepted, made Jordan the first non-Gulf, no-coastline country drawn into Iran's retaliation.

The third strike, on 17 July, broke that pattern of clean interceptions: missiles and drones got through, killing two US soldiers. Three strikes in six weeks confirm the base as a repeatable target rather than a one-off warning, sitting outside the Gulf yet absorbing the same retaliation wave as Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

The Pentagon named the two soldiers killed in the 17 July attack as 1st Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25, and Private Isabella Gonzales, 19, both of Army Air and Missile Defense Command, the unit that operates the ground-based interceptors meant to stop exactly this kind of strike. A third soldier, reported missing, was reclassified as believed deceased on 21 July, taking the toll to 18.

The count tied to this single attack has since become contested: the Department of War cut the war-wide death toll to 14 on 24 July, then restored it to 18 two days later with no explanation for either change. The confusion sits downstream of the strike on this base, not of any dispute about what happened here.