The Iranian-based Mehr News Agency issued the following statement on Oct. 24, 2026. In response to U.S.
Page A237From§Eachthe morning edition — 13 November 2026
Navy Secretary thanks Iran for wrecking a base the Pentagon now says Iran did not hit.
As it ran on the front
Two pieces of paper, same date on both — September 11th — carry basically the same sentence, except one word moved. The Washington Examiner ran it twice that morning. In one version, Iran's foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, "thanks" the acting Navy Secretary. In the other, he "appreciates" him. Same man, same day, same compliment he was returning. I wrote both down because I can't work out why a wire desk needs two different words for one thank-you note. Does the gratitude change depending on which verb carries it?
What he was grateful for, according to both versions, was this: the acting Navy Secretary, Hung Cao, had told the public that Iran "blew the hell out of" a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain — his words, not "hit," not "struck," written down and on the record — and Iran's government took the trouble to send a note of thanks for saying so. I've read it three times looking for the part where somebody on our side disputes it. Where, on the record, does anyone say he was wrong?…
…(cont) I went out to the garage this morning because the car's been needing a belt, and while I was under the hood I got to thinking about insurance claims — the kind where your mechanic measures the dent and the adjuster looks at the same dent and tells you it isn't there. Somebody in that conversation is mistaken. It's not both of them. Which one do you trust, the one with his hands on the engine or the one holding the form?
Because that's where the notebook runs out of room. This week — not September, this week, Friday the 13th — Iran said it had hit that same base again, this time the early-warning radar, the system whose whole job is seeing the missile before it lands. And the United States said it didn't happen. That's the word three outlets used this same day — the Washington Examiner, the Morning Star, ABC News — all three printing it about the same radar: denied.
I keep circling back to that one, because it isn't the word on the page from September. In September the government's own man put his name on the opposite of it. This week, at the same base, the government's position is the word I just wrote down. Same base. Same fleet — the Fifth, headquartered right there in Bahrain. Does a base that got blown apart once, admitted to, and hit again this week, called false this time, belong to two different wars, or the same one?
ABC has the president on record back on February 28th calling this "major combat operations." The Examiner — the same paper that ran two versions of one thank-you note — describes this same fight today as having settled into "sporadic strikes against lower-level targets," now that the intensive part is supposedly finished. Nine months, two descriptions of one war. I'm not telling you which description is accurate. I'm asking which one you'd want in your hand if you had a son stationed on that base.
Hold on — one more thing before you go. Back in October, Iran's government spokeswoman said Tehran "does not need any power's permission to defend itself." So tell me which one is true — September, when it was admitted, or this week, at the same base, when it was denied?
“Our own Navy Secretary went on record thanking Iran for blowing a hole in our base, and two months later the same government insists nothing happened there at all. That's not confusion — that's whichever story keeps the war going without the Pentagon having to answer for it. Either way, the guy footing the bill, or sending his kid there, gets to pick which version he's supposed to believe.”
“Look, two different statements, two different contexts — the Secretary was talking about an earlier strike, this week's denial is specifically about the radar, nobody said the same thing twice. So the government can thank Iran on the record for wrecking a base and also insist nothing there ever got hit — did I just say that? That's not — okay, that one's not landing the way I wanted it to.”
The receipts
Iran claimed it destroyed a U.S. early-warning radar, the first attack of its kind in months, but the United States denied the claim. The U.S.
Trump promised to personally meet Putin and Zelensky and settle the war within 24 hours - CNN counted 53 separate occasions he made that promise CNN fact check, 25 April 2025 (all 53 instances)
Iran live updates: US denies Iran's claim that it destroyed US radar in BahrainPresident Donald Trump announced "major combat operations" against Iran on Feb. 28.
THE US denied that Iran attacked a US early-warning radar in Bahrain today, saying its military intercepted two drones launched towards the island nation. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the claimed attack followed a US strike on a telecommunications pole in the southern Iranian port of Sirik. Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s…
· Iran’s Araghchi thanks acting Navy Secretary Cao for saying Iran ‘blew the hell out of’ US base in Bahrain from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· Iran ‘appreciates’ acting Navy Secretary Cao for saying Iran ‘blew the hell out of’ US base in Bahrain from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.