Evan Sankey
Operation Epic Fury was yet another demonstration of America’s unmatched conventional military capabilities. US forces inflicted substantial losses on Iran’s military, rapidly destroying its navy and most of its air defenses. But despite Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s boasts about striking thousands of Iranian targets, the war was not won. Iran has been able to stay in the fight, keep taking shots, and convince the US to reach for diplomacy.
A crucial reason is that Iran has the power of proximity. In Pentagon-speak, the US has clear military overmatch, but it is still fighting in Iran’s neighborhood and over its territory. Iran’s early, sustained closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the rapid consequences for global energy and financial markets gave it an exceptionally valuable bargaining chip in bringing the US to the negotiating table. Also important was Iran’s ability to continually inflict military punishment. Its missiles and drones struck civilian and military targets in at least eight US partner countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar.
More important, the US military’s forward deployment of 40,000 soldiers on large military bases close to the Gulf offered Iran a series of tantalizing targets. Iranian missiles and drones hit at least a dozen US bases, including the homeport of its 5th Fleet in Bahrain and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Six US soldiers were killed in strikes on US bases in Kuwait. Strikes on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia destroyed a valuable E‑3 Sentry AWACS aircraft and damaged or destroyed several tanker aircraft. The vulnerability of these bases even caused the Pentagon to tell many forward-deployed personnel to work remotely. As the New York Times put it, “many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable.”
Amid the fighting, the US finally ended its decade-long deployment in Syria. But the extent of the damage inflicted on its bases elsewhere in the region and Iran’s ability to sustain strikes over six weeks should compel a broader reevaluation. How much deterrence and operational value does the US derive from military infrastructure that can be targeted even by the severely degraded military forces of a middle power? If our bases can’t support our wars in the region, why have the bases at all?
There is an analogous vulnerability in the Indo-Pacific, where roughly 80,000 US soldiers are forward deployed on about two dozen large bases—many at similar distances from China as the Middle East bases are from Iran. China’s missile arsenal is probably similar in size to Iran’s pre-war stock (about 3,000 missiles) but much more diverse and sophisticated. Space-based targeting will also make it more accurate. And China’s vast industrial capacity could replenish its arsenal quickly during a conflict. US bases in South Korea and the First Island Chain are so vulnerable that they are a source of crisis instability: China has an incentive to strike first in a crisis before US forces scramble from their bases to attack.
The Pentagon has responded to this problem by planning to disperse some US forces to smaller, more austere bases in the run-up to a conflict, but the long-standing role of big, forward bases in US operations and as symbols of assurance to regional allies is difficult to overcome.
China possesses a large and growing nuclear arsenal, so the US is probably less likely to get into a shooting war with China than it was against Iran. On the other hand, US defense policymakers must plan for worst-case scenarios. The last 10 months of conflict with Iran should sharpen their questions about the purpose of the forward bases and the theory behind how those bases could be deployed in a conflict.
