The US military said on Friday that its forces shot down two one-way attack drones launched by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps toward Bahrain, with no injuries or damage, denying the Guard's claim to have destroyed a US early-warning radar in the kingdom — in what CNN reported was Iran's first attempt to strike a military facility in a Gulf state in more than two months. Reuters, the Associated Press and CNN each carried US Central Command's account on Friday. Iran said the launch was retaliation for what it described as an American attack on a telecommunications tower in Sirik, in its southern Hormozgan province. The Associated Press reported that Iran's claim of striking the radar could not be independently verified; no independent confirmation of the Sirik attack appeared in the sources opened for this article, and there was no immediate comment from Bahrain, Reuters reported. Bahrain is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, the AP noted.
What did each side say happened?
Two incompatible accounts of the same launch, on the record opened. The Guard said its aerospace forces had, in its words via the semi-official Tasnim news agency, "targeted and destroyed the early warning radar of the aggressor US military in Bahrain," in response to "the enemy's aerial aggression against a communication tower in Sirik," adding that "this is a serious warning" to Washington, CNN reported. Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted the Guard's statement as saying the attack followed a US strike on a telecommunications pole in the southern port of Sirik, the AP reported.
CENTCOM said the claim that Iran attacked a radar system was false, CNN reported. The US account, carried in the same terms by Reuters and the AP, is that both drones were shot down by US forces and that there were no injuries or damage. What is established across the three outlets is the launch itself and the US interception claim; whether any radar was hit is exactly the point the two sides dispute, and this article publishes the radar claim only as the Guard's claim, against CENTCOM's denial.
Why does the first attempt in more than two months matter?
Because it breaks a pattern both sides had held since early September. CNN reported the launch was Iran's first attempt to strike a military facility in a Gulf state in more than two months, and the AP reported it was Iran's first report of targeting a facility in Bahrain since September. While the US has continued striking Iranian targets around the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks, Tehran has largely refrained from attacking American military installations in Gulf states since early September, focusing instead on disrupting shipping through the waterway, CNN reported — a campaign in which October recorded 37 vessel attacks, the highest monthly total of the conflict, with at least 14 more confirmed in November, according to Lloyd's List figures reported by CNN on Friday.
The claim came during what Reuters called a fragile lull in the conflict between Iran and the US, which began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 and has since spread across the region. The launch also landed a day after President Trump said the US no longer needs a deal with Tehran — "We don't need a deal with Iran" — in a Truth Social post on Thursday, CNN reported, and days after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had instructed his government "to end the state of neither war nor peace." Neither side announced any further action on Friday in the sources opened, and Bahrain had not commented.
Sources: Reuters (13 November 2026, read in full via the rostered srnnews.com Reuters carrier); Associated Press (13 November 2026, read in full via the rostered military.com AP carrier); CNN (13 November 2026, read in full on cnn.com). The drone launch and the US interception are carried by all three outlets from CENTCOM's statement; the destruction of a radar is the Revolutionary Guard's claim, denied by CENTCOM and reported by the AP as not independently verified, and is published here only as that attributed, disputed claim, per this site's two-source rule for contested claims. The Guard's separate Friday claim about a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, dropped as claim-only by this site's earlier watch, is not reported here. Market figures in the snapshot box were checked at publish time via finance-vertical search (Trading Economics, 13 November 2026); no source opened attributed Friday's oil move to the Bahrain interception.
