The most disastrous attack on the US military: I still have nightmares after the attack on Ain al-Assad, an American military official says.
An American media outlet has released a documentary on Iran’s missile attack on the Ain al-Assad base, during which the US military tells the story of the attack.
CBS News Network interviewed a number of US troops at the base in a documentary about Iran’s missile attack on Ain al-Assad airbase after the martyrdom of Sardar Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force. For the first time, the images have been released, captured by US drones.
The documentary, directed by David Martin, shows the tensions that came after the US military launched a drone strike on “Iran’s most powerful general” and ended with an Iranian missile strike on the Ain al-Assad airbase. “It was the largest ballistic missile strike ever against the Americans,” he said.
The film begins with a tearful conversation of an American soldier named “Alan Johnson” which was recorded on the night of the Iran attack. In the film, apparently, he was addressing his son, he says: “Hello, if you watch this film now, and something bad had happened to your father last night, I want you to be strong for your mother. Always remember I love you.”
Martin says that a few hours after the recording of the message by the American military personnel to his son, the rain of Iranian ballistic missiles began to bombard the Ain al-Assad airbase, which hosted 2,000 American troops. He says: “According to the film recorded by an American drone, US soldiers found no solution other than hiding and seeking refuge.”
According to him, each missile weighed more than 1,000 pounds.
“The amount of energy released from this missile could not even be described in words,” says Alan Johnson, referring to the recording of the film and the attack on the night of the attack, the film was initially released. He says Johnson hid in a shelter designed to protect soldiers from missiles in combat with heavily-equipped 60-pound fighters.
Major Johnson describes the rocket attack that night on January 9, 2017 at 1:20 a.m. “I was short of breath, and then the most foul-smelling ammonia-flavored substance entered the shelter and covered my teeth.”
After the wave of explosions and ruins, flames were extinguished.
Alan Johnson: The fire was burning in the shelter above our heads, about 70 feet (21 meters) right over our heads, the shelter could not protect us from it. I said we were on fire then. We started moving down, where it was 135 meters distance. “We were one-third of the way when the sound came. ‘The rocket is coming. Take refuge, take refuge. It was still as big as a football field where I had to run and I did not know when the next rocket would hit.”
Johnson says he was not the only one fleeing to the next shelter. “There were six of us running to get to the shelter,” he said. When we got there, we found out that about 40 people wanted to put themselves in the shelter, which had a capacity of only 10 people. “I pushed the person standing in front of me and said, ‘Go inside the shelter,’ and then pushed everyone else until we entered the shelter.”
Johnson says that when he ran through the shelters, he was only lucky not to lose his life. “It was a chance,” he says. “The only conclusion I came to was that the hand of God protected us, because, in fact, no one survives this catastrophe.”
Frank McKenzie, the commander of US military forces in the West Asian region, also commented on what happened that night, in the documentary. “There were things that could have led us to war if we had not done the right thing,” he said.
McKenzie monitored the events from his office in Tampa, Florida that night. From there, he could contact and talk directly with only two people who were superior to him in terms of hierarchy.
“They first brought the Secretary of Defense to the line, and shortly after, the President joined us,” the commander of the US terrorist forces told CBS. “We listened to reports about Iranian missiles.” Asked if he had ever experienced a similar situation, he said: “I have never experienced a situation where real missiles are fired at our forces and I feel we are in great danger.”
