Iran’s Strikes Put US Military Bases Across the Middle East Under Serious Pressure

Six months of Iranian missile and drone strikes have done something no strategic white paper managed in four decades: forced the Pentagon to seriously consider whether America’s sprawling Gulf base network is worth rebuilding as it was.

The damage behind that reconsideration is extensive and, for the first time, precisely counted. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran’s more than 2,000 strikes since the war began have damaged or destroyed at least 20 US facilities across eight countries, with total losses reaching roughly $13 billion — including more than 42 damaged or destroyed aircraft, among them F-35s worth an estimated $3.6 billion at unit prices alone. A THAAD missile-defense radar in Jordan, worth nearly $500 million, was destroyed in the war’s opening days; the same base was later hit again in a barrage that killed three American soldiers. Bahrain’s Naval Support Activity base — headquarters of the US 5th Fleet — has been struck twice, first in February and again in June, destroying satellite communication terminals and other facilities. Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem base has been hit repeatedly, injuring at least 20 personnel.

That damage record is now driving an actual Pentagon review, not just outside commentary. The Washington Post reported the Defense Department’s policy office, working with the Joint Staff and Central Command, is assessing whether to pull troops back from Persian Gulf installations that proved indefensible against short-range Iranian weapons — normally home to roughly 40,000 US troops spread across nearly 20 sites in a 1,500-mile arc from Jordan to Oman. No formal posture review has been ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but a senior official told the Post the analysis amounts to “prudent planning,” adding bluntly: “decisions are going to have to be made on some of this stuff.”

The military has already made informal moves that look like early signals of where that planning is heading. The US relocated dozens of aircraft to Ben Gurion Airport and Ramon Air Base inside Israel, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, putting them farther from Iranian short-range missile envelopes — Iran’s shortest-range weapons can already reach 435 miles, enough to threaten bases across Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Oman and the UAE. Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh has emerged in internal discussions as a possible consolidation point, though analysts caution that concentrating forces there risks creating one large, predictable target requiring its own extensive hardening rather than solving the underlying vulnerability.

The financial calculus is what’s forcing the decision to a head. American Enterprise Institute estimated in April that repairing the 11 most heavily damaged facilities alone would cost close to $5 billion — a figure the Pentagon’s own $37.5 billion running war-cost estimate through September doesn’t even include. CSIS defense analyst Mark Cancian told ABC News the interceptor shortage compounds the dilemma: US forces have fired more than 1,000 Patriot and THAAD interceptors defending these bases, creating what he called “this gap, this window of vulnerability” that also weakens stockpiles needed for a potential future conflict with China in the Pacific — a trade-off that makes rebuilding in place look increasingly like reproducing the same exposure at even greater cost.

Iran’s own adaptation compounds the long-term calculation. A former Israeli military intelligence official told the Financial Times that Iran is likely to shift emphasis toward medium-range missiles capable of reaching Jordan and Israel specifically, meaning any American retreat to more “distant” regional bases may only buy warning time, not immunity — a reality confirmed by the fact that CFR itself notes bases farther from Iran would still be in range, just with more time to react.

The decision Washington now faces extends well beyond engineering and budget lines. Gulf states are already, per the Financial Times’ reporting, hedging their own security bets toward other global powers, and allies across the region are asking a harder question than where US troops should sit: how far Washington’s defense commitments can actually be trusted to hold in a real crisis — a question no base relocation, wherever it lands, will fully answer on its own.