Al-Asad base had minutes notice before the Iranian rockets came crashing down in an hour-long barrag
AIN AL-ASAD, Iraq - U.S. troops at the Iraqi military base targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles last week had only minutes notice before the blasts began, the military personnel there that night said on Monday.
On a visit to the sprawling Ain al-Asad air base in the Iraqi province of Anbar, reporters saw deep craters and the crumpled wreckage of living quarters and a helicopter launch site. The attack lasted more than an hour and a half, troops said, with each explosion illuminating the landscape for miles.
Lt. Col. Antoinette Chase, who oversaw the emergency response during the Jan. 7 strike, said that the base was notified of an imminent attack around 15 to 20 minutes before it started, with each fresh volley of missiles being announced five minutes ahead of time. "There were barrages," she said.
Most military personnel were in bunkers until the sun rose, but with fears of a potential ground incursion swirling, others were out in the open, assessing blast sites and checking for casualties, even as the attack continued.
In the hours that followed, Iran described the attacks as a shot of "harsh revenge" that had killed dozens. Within a day, that rhetoric had shifted and U.S. and Iraqi officials were insisting that nobody had been killed or wounded.
Accounts from inside the Trump administration have suggested that the lack of casualties was a crucial factor in the president's decision not to escalate further. "All is well!" he posted in a tweet hours after the attack.
But across Ain al-Asad, the damage in several areas appeared to indicate that this could have been a function of luck, not design. The base houses some 2,000 troops, 1,500 of them from the U.S.-led coalition. It had been on high alert all afternoon, following an indication that attacks might be coming, officials said. Emergency drills for a similar scenario had been conducted days earlier.
Tensions between the United States and Iran have sharpened dramatically in the week since one of Tehran's most prominent military commanders, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike on Iraqi soil, and retaliation was widely expected.
"Right before the first wave began, it was quiet, but then over the radio we heard a crackle and: 'incoming, incoming'," said First Lt. Charles Duncan, 25, standing amid the charred and twisted remnants of another soldier's living space. "In those seconds, we just waited."