In the wake of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, the Trump administration is conducting a high-stakes review of whether to withdraw a substantial portion of American military forces from the Persian Gulf, as the Pentagon assesses growing security risks to large U.S. military installations that have come under repeated drone and missile strikes from Iranian forces, according to a recent exclusive report from The Washington Post.
The policy review is being spearheaded by the Department of Defense’s policy office, with senior defense officials framing the current conflict as a generational turning point that creates an unprecedented opportunity to overhaul the United States’ decades-long military posture in the Middle East, the Post reported Tuesday. Early signals from the administration already indicate the U.S. may not reconstruct Iranian-attacked bases to their pre-war operational capacity, the outlet added.
The Post’s new reporting corroborates an exclusive investigation published by Middle East Eye (MEE) in June, which quoted multiple current and former senior U.S. officials confirming that the conflict would prompt a fundamental reckoning with the outdated Cold War-era basing structure that has anchored American military presence in the region for decades. Discussion of a significant drawdown has been circulating among former national security leaders for months, with multiple retired top officials publicly calling for a major shift in deployment strategy.
David Petraeus, who previously led U.S. Central Command (Centcom) — the military combatant command that oversees all American forces in the Middle East — and later served as CIA director, told Bloomberg in May that the persistent threat of long-range Iranian drone and missile attacks has fundamentally undermined the case for maintaining large, static bases in the Gulf. “The truth is that we are not as inclined to occupy these bases now that we have seen what the Iranians can throw at them,” Petraeus said, noting that the current threat landscape is far more severe than when he led Centcom decades earlier.
Another former Centcom commander, retired General Frank McKenzie, doubled down on that assessment in July, arguing that the U.S. should relocate core Gulf-based military assets to Israel and other western neighboring countries to shield critical infrastructure from Iranian strikes. McKenzie pointed to al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar — which currently hosts Centcom’s forward headquarters just 100 miles from Iranian territory — as a major strategic vulnerability, saying, “No one in their right mind would ever put the Centcom forward headquarters […] yet that’s where it is.”
McKenzie characterized the current U.S. basing network in the Middle East as a Cold War-era relic, designed initially to deter Soviet expansion into the oil-rich Gulf and later adapted for counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, a mission that no longer matches the current threat environment dominated by Iranian long-range strike capabilities. “[The U.S.] strategy does not match the reality on the ground,” he added.
Notably, even the current top Centcom leader, U.S. Admiral Bradley Cooper, has thrown his support behind discussions of shifting American military forces westward away from the Gulf, the Post reported. So far, shifting threat dynamics have already pushed a partial U.S. repositioning: Iran has systematically targeted key U.S. installations across the Gulf, including Bahrain (home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet), Qatar (Centcom headquarters), and major air bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
Smaller Gulf states positioned close to Iran, such as Kuwait and Bahrain, have proven to be the most exposed to Iranian attacks, prompting the U.S. to begin gradual repositioning westward since the outbreak of the current conflict. MEE was the first outlet to report that the U.S. secured access to Taif Air Base in Saudi Arabia back in March, after Iranian strikes heavily damaged Prince Sultan Air Base located southeast of Riyadh.