Reuters : Hours of forewarning saved U.S., Iraqi lives from Iran's missile attack

Nearly eight hours before Iran’s Jan. 8 missile attack on U.S. forces at bases in Iraq, American and Iraqi soldiers at Ain al-Asad air base scrambled to move personnel and weaponry to fortified bunkers, two Iraqi officers stationed at the base told Reuters.

By midnight, not a single fighter jet or helicopter remained out in the open, said one of the sources, an intelligence officer. Another Iraqi intelligence source said U.S. troops even seemed to know the timing of the attack, saying they seemed “totally aware” the base would be attacked “after midnight.”

When the missiles finally landed at about 1:30 a.m., they struck “empty bunkers that had been evacuated hours before,” the intelligence source said. No one was injured or killed.

After the missiles landed, several major U.S. media outlets quoted U.S. officials saying the attack had been little more than a warning shot, allowing Iran to satisfy calls for revenge at home - after the U.S. air strike on Jan. 3 that killed an Iranian general - without much risk of provoking further U.S. attacks. Others, citing U.S. and Arab sources, reported that Iran warned Iraq before the attacks and that Iraq had passed that information to the United States.