Inside the U.S. Military Buildup in Israel |
Foreign Policy
Inside the U.S. Military Buildup in Israel
Iran has reportedly made U.S. bases in Arab countries “uninhabitable.” Israel is pitching itself as an alternative.
Matthew Petti | 3.31.2026 10:58 AM
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(Nevatim Air Base, U.S. Air Force)
The permanent U.S. presence in the Middle East started in the oil-rich Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Immediately after the withdrawal of the British Empire in 1971, the U.S. Navy took over the old British fortress in Bahrain. Nine years later, President Jimmy Carter declared the security of the Gulf part of the "vital interests of the United States" in a speech later dubbed the Carter Doctrine. Four years after that, the U.S. military created Central Command (CENTCOM) to oversee the Middle East, with forward headquarters in Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait.
But the war with Iran has rendered several U.S. bases in the Gulf "all but uninhabitable," forcing American personnel to disperse to nearby civilian office spaces and hotels, according to The New York Times. Those places are not necessarily safe, either: Iranian drones wounded two Pentagon employees at a Bahraini hotel early in the war. Over the weekend, a combined Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia destroyed a valuable E-3 Sentry radar surveillance plane (the U.S. has only 16 in total), damaged several aerial tankers, and wounded 10 Americans.
The Israeli military sees this damage as an opportunity to permanently "reshape the map" of U.S. military presence and is pushing the U.S. to move its bases from other parts of the Middle East to Israel, officials told Israel's Channel 12. (Asked for comment, the U.S. State Department referred Reason to the Pentagon, which did not respond.) From the perspective of hawks in Washington, this move may be a way to have their cake and eat it, too. While appearing to move American troops out of harm's........