PDB Afternoon Bulletin | November 13th, 2026: Iran Strikes American Military Installation in Bahrain & China’s Secret Taiwan War Games

Mike Baker (0:12)

It's Friday, the 13th of November. Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, Iran says it struck an American military installation Bahrain, marking a new escalation in its ongoing confrontation with the US. Later in the show, China deploys more than 100 vessels in massive, unannounced war games around Taiwan, potentially rehearsing how to keep American forces out of a future conflict. But first, today's afternoon spotlight.

The low-level conflict between the US and Iran is continuing with Tehran now claiming it's carried out a direct attack on an American military installation in the Persian Gulf. Well, that doesn't sound very low level. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, announced early Friday that their forces had targeted and destroyed a US early warning radar system in Bahrain. That's home to the US. Navy's Fifth Fleet. The Iranians say it was retaliation for an airstrike on a telecommunications tower in the southern Iranian port of Sirik on Thursday. Now, an important qualification here. Neither the US nor Bahrain has confirmed that the radar was struck, much less destroyed. And while Iranian media reported explosions in Sirik, Washington has not acknowledged carrying out and the attack at Tehran is blaming on the US. But the claim itself is significant, according to Reuters. This is the first time since early September that Iran has claimed an attack against American military assets in a Gulf country, and it comes as Washington and Tehran continue exchanging blows without the US committing to another full-scale military campaign. Bahrain is important for American power projection. As mentioned, it hosts the headquarters of the Navy's Fifth Fleet, which oversees US naval operations across the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. Iran has not identified the radar installation that they claimed to have hit, and there's no independent damage assessment. So, we are not at this point saying that an American defense system has been knocked offline or just reporting the Iranian claims. Still, the reported exchange follows a familiar pattern that we have been tracking here on the PDB.

Rather than a return to the massive strikes that marked the opening months of the war, we're seeing a series of smaller confrontations, back and forths, attacks on islands, vessels, infrastructure, each carrying the possibility of a larger response.

Earlier this week, we told you about Iran's reported attack on navigation systems located on Oman's Didymar Island, that's near the Strait of Hormuz. Reuters subsequently confirmed the attack with three sources familiar with the matter and verified footage showing smoke rising from the island. What remains unclear is just how much damage the navigation equipment actually sustained. Meanwhile, the pressure on shipping has not stopped. On Friday, the IRGC claimed that a tanker had struck a naval mine while traveling through what Iran called an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz. The Associated Press said that account could not be independently verified and there was no immediate confirmation from the British maritime agency that tracks attacks on ships. All this comes at a complicated moment for the White House. On Thursday, President Trump said the US no longer needed a negotiated agreement with Iran, arguing that American economic pressure and control over the strait had given Washington sufficient leverage. Yet in a separate interview, Trump said Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf partners had urged him to hold off on further large scale strikes. He specifically named Bahrain among the countries that preferred to keep the current approach in place. Washington, of course, wants to maintain pressure on Tehran without returning to a major regional bombing campaign. Gulf governments have their own reasons to want to avoid another escalation, including of course the risk of attacks on their territory and energy infrastructure. Iran, meanwhile, may see these limited attacks as a way to demonstrate that the pressure can cut both ways. The Iranian regime can impose risks and costs without necessarily inviting the kind of overwhelming response that a much larger assault might provoke. Of course, calculating where that threshold lies is dangerous, especially if American personnel are hit.

All right, coming up next, China mobilizes a massive naval force across the Western Pacific, practicing operations that could isolate Taiwan and keep the US military at bay. I'll be right back.

Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, I've been a business owner for many years, and I want to take just a moment to talk to all you small business operators out there. Look, here's the thing. Running any small business, you know this, means dealing with constant unexpected expenses, right? Whether it's upgrading an IT system, repair costs, or managing payroll, there's always something. And you cannot afford to let traditional bank red tape slow your momentum. That's why you need Cardiff, America's favorite small business lender. With over $12 billion funded to small businesses nationwide, they specialize in high-speed liquidity. Unlike legacy banks, Cardiff's simple application takes only 3 minutes, has absolutely no impact on your personal credit to apply, and offers same-day funding up to $500,000.