WASHINGTON — Iran has fielded a new generation of ballistic missiles that can evade American air defenses and strike with far greater precision – a technological leap that military experts say has damaged the ring of U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf and left them more vulnerable than they've been in decades.
The centerpiece of that shift is a highly mobile ballistic missile Iran calls the Kheibar Shekan, or "Castle Breaker," which has a range of 900 miles and a satellite-guided, maneuverable warhead.
Iran's military has used the missile extensively in strikes on the U.S. naval hub in Bahrain and other American bases during the six-month war with the U.S. and Israel, according to the Iranian government and confirmed with former U.S. military and intelligence officials and weapons analysts.
Some of those analysts believe Iran used Castle Breaker missiles in the July 17 strikes on the U.S. Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Al-Azraq, Jordan, that killed three American service members − an assertion Iran itself has also made, according to official government statements obtained by USA Today.
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And on Monday, an Iranian state-run outlet confirmed it used Kheibar Shekan missiles to hit Muwaffaq Salti and the King Hussein air base in Jordan in response to a U.S. military attack on Iran's Larak Island.
Projectiles streak across the sky in this screengrab taken from footage published by Iranian authorities purporting to show missiles launched at US military targets Monday in Jordan from an unknown location.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) "targeted the technical and maintenance infrastructure as well as fighter-jet bases at the two facilities, causing significant damage" at the bases, said Iran's IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency.
Unlike a conventional ballistic missile that travels a fixed path defenders can track and try to intercept, the Kheibar Shekan can quickly change course in the final phase of its descent, potentially slipping past air defenses and hitting targets with devastating precision, those sources said.
Mounted on mobile launchers, the solid-fuel missile is extremely difficult to detect and destroy before launch, allowing it to survive American bombardment campaigns. It can easily reach U.S. and allied targets across the Middle East, including in Israel – and major American bases like Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia and the Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.
"We designed entire air defense systems based on this understanding of what we thought they would do," Jonathan Hackett, a former Marine and U.S. intelligence officer, said of Iran’s military capabilities.
And now, he said, "they're doing something different."
"So now you have to change your defensive posture for missile defense in a way that we hadn't been doing previously. Ever," said Hackett, a fluent Farsi speaker who spent two decades working on Iran-related military and intelligence issues out of six U.S. embassies. He held positions at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Marine Forces Special Operations Command before retiring in October 2024.
Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz are visible Aug. 28 near the beach of Bandar Abbas, Iran.
In interviews with USA Today, Hackett and other experts described how the Kheibar Shekan and other Iranian missiles have on occasion penetrated the layered defenses American forces have relied on for generations during the war against Tehran that President Donald Trump launched jointly with Israel six months ago.
Hackett believes Kheibar missiles were central to the July 17 strike. Like other analysts, though, he said U.S. officials have made that hard to corroborate by asking major commercial satellite providers to black out imagery of sensitive U.S. military sites in the region.
Iranian missiles have also caused extensive damage to the U.S. Naval Support Activity base in Bahrain − the regional hub of the Navy's 5th Fleet − and other key U.S. military installations, according to U.S. and allied statements, news reports, satellite imagery and USA TODAY interviews.
An independent analysis of satellite imagery conducted by The Washington Post revealed that Iranian missile and drone strikes damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures and pieces of equipment across at least 15 U.S. military sites in the Middle East during the conflict.
Top administration officials, including Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and Trump himself, insisted that the U.S. campaign has destroyed Iran’s military capabilities and that U.S. air defenses have been successful the majority of the time, an assertion Iran vehemently denies.
“U.S. forces absolutely remain fully operational. We have everything required to strike at the time and place of the President’s choosing,” chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Friday. “Across multiple combatant commands, we have already executed successful operations while maintaining a deep, ready arsenal to defend our people and our interests.”
The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment Monday about whether the Castle Breaker broke through U.S. defenses during the overnight exchange of military strikes and caused damage.
The threat from the relatively new Iranian technology helped prompt a public reckoning earlier this month, when retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey stated on social media that the United States had "probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases" because of Iranian missile and drone strikes.
McCaffrey’s Aug. 22 post drew more than 3.8 million views, sparking a debate in U.S. military and intelligence circles over whether the Trump administration had sufficiently accounted for Iran's missile counterpunch before launching an unprovoked war.
McCaffrey, who served in the U.S. Army for 32 years and retired as a four-star general, is highly decorated for being wounded three times in combat. He led 26,000 troops into battle in Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion. More recently, he was a prominent military analyst and critic of Trump's war in Iran.
McCaffrey was responding to a statement that Iranian counterattacks had all but destroyed the Bahrain base, which is the primary anchor for U.S. naval power in the Persian Gulf region. It also provides logistical, supply and operational support to U.S. and coalition ships, aircraft and personnel throughout the Middle East.
As a result of that counterattack and others like it, McCaffrey wrote, “Iran (is) now poised to control access (to) the Gulf States. (The) US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe.”
In interviews with USA Today, McCaffrey said the Iranian missile capability, especially the Kheibar Shekan, is central to his conclusion that U.S. bases in the Gulf are too vulnerable to stay where they are.
The missile, he said, is particularly agile, well-hidden by Iran, and something that U.S. military installations in the region can't completely defend against. Its capabilities, he said, amount to "a significant change in technology."
Both McCaffrey and Hackett said the Kheibar Shekan and other Iranian missiles, combined with Iran's aggressive use of sophisticated drones, have caused considerable damage to U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force bases and smaller encampments throughout the Middle East.
Jim Lamson, a CIA analyst from 1998 to 2021, said the Kheibar Shekan’s guidance system allows it to adjust its trajectory and maneuver rapidly to strike within 10 meters of a target, a significant achievement given how far it travels.
And its ability to “maneuver in the terminal phase" means it can "completely avoid" two or three interceptors fired at it by opposing military forces, said Lamson, who now tracks Iran's missile program as a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
