How Iran attacks are forcing the Pentagon to rethink its decades-old Middle East base strategy
After weeks of Iranian missile and drone attacks exposed the vulnerability of major U.S. military bases across the Gulf, the Pentagon is weighing whether decades of relying on large, permanent installations within range of Iranian weapons still makes strategic sense.
Defense officials are considering dispersing some capabilities and reassessing parts of the U.S. regional base posture, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The Gulf base network is how the U.S. responds quickly to Iran, protects shipping lanes, reassures Arab partners and keeps pressure on ISIS and al Qaeda. If the Pentagon reduces or disperses that footprint, it could make U.S. forces harder to hit — but also slower to surge in a crisis.
For decades, the tradeoff was straightforward: the closer U.S. forces were to the fight, the faster they could respond. But Operation Epic Fury reignited a long-running debate over whether concentrating aircraft, ships, command centers and thousands of troops at a handful of large Gulf bases had become an increasingly dangerous liability in an era of precision missiles and drones.
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Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery said the military already has started relying more heavily on alternate command-and-control locations — the headquarters and communications hubs commanders use to direct military operations — and rotating forces rather than concentrating capabilities at a handful of installations close to Iran.
"We're not relying on them in the same way that we did before the war," Montgomery told Fox News Digital. "I think we are going to reposition these forces."
The Pentagon has spent decades building a network of Gulf bases designed to put aircraft, ships and troops within minutes of potential crises across the Middle East. That strategy relied on concentrating combat power at a handful of large installations that offered unmatched access to the region.
But during Operation Epic Fury, Iran launched repeated missile and drone attacks against some of the Pentagon's most important regional installations, including Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.
While U.S. and partner air defenses intercepted many incoming weapons and casualties remained limited, the attacks demonstrated that virtually every major American operating hub in the Gulf now sits within range of Iranian missiles and drones.
U.S. forces in the Middle East have endured rocket and drone attacks for years, many carried out by Iranian-backed proxy groups against individual outposts in Iraq and Syria. Operation Epic Fury marked a broader test of the Pentagon's regional basing model, with Iran directly targeting multiple major air and naval hubs that underpin U.S. military operations across the Gulf.
Naval Support Activity Bahrain alone sustained extensive damage to command facilities and communications infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal reported. Since the conflict began Feb. 28, 13 U.S. service members have been killed and 400 wounded, with most wounded returning to duty.
Many of the fatalities resulted from a small number of attacks, including a missile strike in Kuwait and an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, Central Command spokesperson, declined to discuss battle damage assessments but told Fox News Digital the U.S. military "rightfully prioritized the protection of people over buildings, and our strategy of protecting people worked. Iran shot more than 8,000 missiles and drones and only two resulted in U.S. fatalities. We did far more damage to Iran than they did to us — by a lot."
What that future posture ultimately looks like remains under review.
A senior U.S. official told Fox News Digital questions about dispersing forces and reducing reliance on a handful of large Gulf bases had been debated since well before Operation Epic Fury, which had reignited those conversations.
"As a planning organization, we continually assess the security environment and make adjustments to best support operations and protect our troops. This has always been the case and remains so going forward," Hawkins said in response.
Defense officials are weighing whether to disperse military capabilities across a broader network of facilities, move some bases or functions further west and even relocate certain operations to Israel, while reducing the U.S. presence at some installations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the Journal reported. Officials also are reportedly considering moving some command structures underground, or forgoing rebuilding damaged structures.
"We do not have any force posture changes to announce or anything to provide at this time," a War Department official told Fox News Digital.
A Joint Staff spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the military is tracking diplomatic developments in the region while continually monitoring and evaluating U.S. force posture.
Former counterterrorism director Joe Kent, who resigned over the Trump administration's war with Iran, has long pushed for the U.S. to reduce its presence in the Gulf.
"Our bases in the Middle East are strategic liabilities not strategic assets. Less bases = less targets for Iran to shoot at and that = less leverage for Iran," he wrote on X Saturday.
"It's absolutely being discussed," Retired Adm. Kevin Donegan, the former commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which leads U.S. naval operations across the Middle East, told Fox News Digital. "After (the Iran conflict) is over, I think in each country it'll be independently evaluated based on our relationships with those countries."
Montgomery said geography itself has become part of the problem. Many of the Gulf's largest U.S. bases sit only about 90 miles from Iranian launch sites, leaving little time and space to respond to incoming drones.
"They're just too close," Montgomery said. "They're...90 miles away from Iranian launch points."
Fighter aircraft have become one of the primary tools for intercepting Iranian drones, but Montgomery said the Gulf's proximity to Iran leaves defenders with less time and space to intercept drones after launch.
"Our way of shooting down drones, the best way is aircraft equipped with rockets," he said. "But to do that, you got to get behind the drones. That's hard."
Moving some operations farther west would not put U.S. troops beyond the reach of all Iranian weapons. Iran's longer-range missiles can reach Israel and other parts of the region, and former commanders cautioned that there may no longer be any truly safe rear area.
But dispersing command nodes, aircraft, logistics hubs and personnel across more locations could reduce the risk that a single strike disabling a critical U.S. capability.
"Everywhere we have forces around the world, they are under the missile envelope of potential adversaries," he said. "So, where do you go to?"
"What you can do is buy yourself a little time against the threat, but in the end, we still need to have access to basing, because our being in the Gulf is not just to revolve around Iran, we have other reasons to be there, whether that be to ensure that terrorists like ISIS and Al Qaeda, etc. don’t threaten stability," Donegan went on.
The bases that came under attack form the backbone of America's military presence in the Gulf.
The U.S. typically maintains about 40,000 troops across the Middle East, anchored by a network of major bases built up during the post-9/11 wars. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar —home to the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command and the largest U.S. military installation in the region — alone hosts about 10,000 American personnel. Other major hubs include Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.
Those installations became the backbone of U.S. military operations during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and remain central to American air, naval and logistics operations across the region.
Fox News Digital reached out to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the White House and the governments of Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel for comment.
Trump has not publicly commented on the matter.