The war with Iran has exposed the vulnerability of large US military bases in the Gulf to missiles and drones, reviving a strategic question Washington has long faced over the value of maintaining such an extensive military presence in the region.
After decades in which these bases formed a central pillar of US power in the Middle East, Washington now faces a choice between spending billions of dollars rebuilding facilities shown to be vulnerable, or reconsidering the scale and structure of its military deployment to better reflect the realities of modern warfare.
In this context, the Financial Times published a report examining the future of the US military presence in the Gulf. It noted that Iranian attacks on US facilities using short-range missiles and drones demonstrated the vulnerability of large bases, particularly because of their proximity to the Iranian coastline, and forced Washington to relocate troops and aircraft to positions farther beyond the range of such attacks.
For nearly four decades, US military bases in the Gulf have been a cornerstone of Washington’s military presence in the Middle East.
The United States has enjoyed access to military bases across all the major Gulf states for more than three decades. It must now decide whether to spend billions of dollars rebuilding those facilities or reconsider the scale of its military footprint across the Middle East.
Large Bases Increasingly Seen as Vulnerable
The newspaper quoted Hal Brands, a scholar at Johns Hopkins University, as saying that these facilities have become highly vulnerable.
He expects US forces to be redistributed away from the Arabian Gulf and beyond bases that lie within range of short-range missiles and drones.
As large, fixed bases become less attractive to planners at the US Department of War, who are rethinking how modern conflicts should be fought, Washington may increasingly favour a deployment model designed to make American forces more difficult to target.
That shift has accelerated longstanding calls to reduce the size of the US presence in the Gulf, which for decades represented the military dimension of an arrangement originally built around providing security in exchange for safeguarding Washington’s oil interests and those of its regional allies.
US Central Command has recently begun experimenting with dispersing troops across smaller combat hubs and rapidly moving fighter aircraft between temporary runways designed for quick landings and take-offs.
Dana Stroul, a former US deputy assistant secretary of war for Middle East affairs, said the United States could adopt a more flexible and agile approach.
She argued that the exposed design of Gulf bases is a legacy of an earlier era and is poorly suited to modern conflict.
The sheer size of these facilities and the amount of infrastructure exposed above ground have become major concerns surrounding US bases in the Gulf.
During the war, Iran targeted aircraft hangars, resupply facilities, radar infrastructure, and command-and-control centres, forcing the US Fifth Fleet to use the remote island of Diego Garcia as an alternative supply hub after its headquarters in Bahrain was damaged.
Rebuilding Could Cost Billions
Given the scale of the damage, Nate Swanson, a former director for Iran at the US National Security Council, argued that there was little value in rebuilding these locations.
He said the need to fund reconstruction of facilities that are no longer considered desirable could accelerate trends that were already under way.
In April, the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, estimated that repairing damage to 11 US bases across seven Middle Eastern countries would cost around $5 billion.
At the same time, the United States relocated forces to the occupied territories and Jordan, while conducting air operations from bases in Europe that were beyond the range of Iranian missiles and drones launched across the region.
However, any repositioning of US forces would not occur without a corresponding Iranian response.
As Tehran increasingly comes to view a long-term confrontation with Washington as unavoidable, Danny Citrinowicz, a former Iran analyst in Israeli military intelligence, expects Iran to invest more heavily in medium-range missiles capable of striking Jordan and Israel.
Washington’s Need for Gulf Bases Is Declining
These developments come as the need to maintain a broad network of US bases has diminished, particularly as Washington has sought in recent years to reduce its involvement in the Middle East and refocus attention on the Pacific.
Stroul said the United States no longer needs these bases in the same way it once did.
Any reassessment of US military deployments would also affect the number of troops stationed in the Gulf.
Under normal conditions, around 35,000 US troops rotate through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait.
However, three former US Defence Department strategists predicted that this number could fall to levels not seen since before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Reducing the US military presence, however, creates a strategic dilemma for Washington: how to scale back its deployment in the Gulf without expanding Iranian influence or alarming its Arab allies.
The oil-for-security arrangement with regional allies developed over decades, while some Gulf states have increasingly sought to diversify their security relationships beyond Washington.
The war with Iran, however, has prompted all US allies in the region to reconsider the nature and reliability of Washington’s commitment to their defence.
Brands said the current situation reflects a clash between military and diplomatic imperatives.
He stressed the need to counter the perception that the United States is abandoning its allies and withdrawing from the region.
Stroul similarly argued that Washington must strike a careful balance between US operational requirements and its commitments to regional partners.
She said policymakers need to assess how many military assets and personnel are actually necessary to guarantee the security of Gulf states.
A Deeper Strategic Deadlock
The uncertain future of US military facilities reflects a growing sense of a deeper strategic impasse caused by the continuing stalemate in the confrontation with Tehran.
The US presence in the Gulf dates back to the years following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979.
At the time, US President Jimmy Carter introduced what later became known as the “Carter Doctrine”, under which Washington declared that it would not allow any hostile state to dominate the Gulf and would use force to repel any such attempt.
A massive expansion of permanent US bases followed Iraq’s defeat in the first Gulf War.
However, Gregory Brew, a historian and analyst at the Eurasia Group, argues that the Carter Doctrine has now collapsed.
He said there is a sense that Washington has returned to where it began: the Islamic Revolution in Iran helped drive the creation of the Carter Doctrine, while the war with Iran has now brought about its collapse.
Against this changing strategic landscape, the White House appears to lack a new overarching concept for the Middle East that could guide officials seeking to establish a coherent path forward in the region.
Brands said the US Department of Defence would develop plans and preparations for how Washington should redirect its military deployments, but implementing them consistently would be difficult because, at some point, they would collide with President Donald Trump.
The Financial Times noted that Trump has frequently said he does not want to be remembered like President Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was damaged by the Iranian Revolution and the taking of American hostages at the US embassy in Tehran.
The historical irony, according to the newspaper, is that strategic failure in Iran may also come to haunt Trump, leaving him to follow in Carter’s footsteps.
