The Pentagon is Considering Reducing Its Forces in the Gulf After the Destruction of 200 Facilities in the Iran War and Moving Them Westward Towards Jordan and Israel

A report published by the Washington Post on Tuesday, August 18, citing eight American officials and insiders, revealed that the Pentagon is considering reducing its military presence in the Gulf after the Iran War, marking the first practical indication that this war may fundamentally reshape the American presence in the region. The assessment is still in its early stages, led by the Pentagon's policy office with the participation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), raising a question that was not posed six months ago: Should the damaged bases be rebuilt at their current locations, or should the forces be moved to places beyond the range of Iranian missiles?

War Numbers and the Cost of Presence

The American presence in the region was not small before the war: about 40,000 soldiers distributed across nearly twenty sites stretching from Jordan to Oman. The largest permanent bases are concentrated in the Gulf, led by the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and large Army and Air Force facilities in Kuwait. However, these bases became fixed targets for Iranian drones and missiles during the 172 days of war, suffering losses not seen by Washington in decades.

More than 200 American facilities were damaged or destroyed during the conflict, and six American soldiers were killed in March in a strike targeting the Shuaiba military port in Kuwait. U.S. air defenses were drained in an unprecedented manner: the Pentagon used over a thousand advanced interceptors, including Patriot and THAAD, leading to a depletion of their strategic stocks. The U.S. government estimates the cost of the war at about $37.5 billion by the end of September, not including the reconstruction of damaged facilities, which the American Enterprise Institute estimated in April at about $5 billion alone.

The Option of Moving Westward Towards Jordan and Israel

One of the options on the table is to move part of the forces and equipment away from the Gulf to sites further west, including Jordan and Israel or Saudi Arabia. Central Command Commander Admiral Bradley Cooper supports these discussions, according to an American official, on the basis that reducing troop concentrations within the range of Iranian drones decreases the risk to Americans, although it does not eliminate the threat. The Defense Priorities Foundation went further by suggesting closing bases within the range of Iranian missiles, including facilities in Kuwait, and relocating forces stationed in the UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain to safer locations, while another faction within the administration calls for moving additional forces to Israel, including the Ovda base, a choice that faces internal opposition due to counterintelligence concerns.

"Iran thinks we are in the traditional places, and we are not there" — an insider on the U.S. deployment file

The previous sentence, quoted by the Washington Post from someone familiar with the U.S. military position, summarizes the essence of the shift: Washington has begun to act as if its bases in the Gulf are no longer strategic assets but costly commitments. The current assessment was described by a senior Pentagon official as "prudent planning" rather than an official review, but it is, at its core, an acknowledgment that the model of a permanent presence in the Gulf, built over four decades, can no longer bear the costs revealed by the war.

What Does This Mean for the Gulf States?

Practically, the Gulf states are not a party to this decision, and they will be the ones to pay the price. Any military officer who has served in the region knows that the true shield of the Gulf has never been its own weapons, but the American bases and the presence of the Fifth Fleet. When Riyadh and Abu Dhabi spoke of a maritime alliance of 15 countries after the August attacks on ADNOC ships in Hormuz, and when Ankara and Islamabad signed the Mecca Agreement for mutual defense, the message was both for the domestic audience and for Washington: we are building alternatives. But paper alternatives do not produce objections or fleets. The new American assessment puts these claims to a real test: if the Pentagon reduces its presence, who will respond to the next Iranian missile aimed at an oil facility in the Gulf?

Here lies the paradox that mainstream Western analysis avoids. The West reads the assessment as a matter of cost and logistical repositioning, but the Gulf states read it as a political message: the United States acknowledges that its bases within the range of Iranian missiles have become targets, not shields. This strikes at the core of the security contract that Gulf states have built their security upon since 1991. And when the choice is between moving forces westward to Jordan and Israel — that is, outside the Gulf — the deterrence that once meant "an American soldier on my land" transforms into "an American plane coming on demand," which is a fundamental difference in the calculations of any potential aggressor.

The Lesson the Gulf Does Not Want to Hear

The triad of capability that I always repeat — equipment × training × institutions — is painfully evident here. The Gulf has spent trillions on equipment, while training and institutions have remained secondary, as the ultimate protection was rented from abroad. The current war has revealed that the contract is subject to unilateral renegotiation. In my estimation, Washington will not withdraw completely — oil interests and major logistical bases prevent that — but it will reduce, and every reduction will be a test of the Gulf's ability to fill the void, a capability that has not yet been built. The Arab proverb says: he who rents a shield, has only the duration of the lease.

The options before the Gulf states are narrow and costly: either accelerate the building of real defensive capabilities — a project of decades, not years — or accept protection from a further distance, or seek a new protector on more expensive terms. Continuing to purchase weapons as political messages is what they were doing before the war, and the war has changed nothing about it. The Pentagon is considering reducing its presence because the war has proven that a fixed base within the line of fire is a negative asset; and the question that the Gulf will face in the coming years is not "Will America stay?" but "What will we build in its absence?"