Pentagon seeks to 'move' Gulf bases away from Iran: Report
Satellite and social media images show vastly greater damage to the US Navy's key base in the region from Iranian strikes than the US military has previously admitted
The US is considering moving parts of its military presence in West Asia farther west, including to Israel, after retaliatory Iranian missile and drone strikes inflicted severe damage on US bases in the region during the war, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 26 June.
Citing US government officials, the WSJ revealed that retaliatory Iranian strikes caused an estimated $400 million in previously unacknowledged damage to the US military's premier military base in West Asia, the Naval Support Activity Bahrain (NSA Bahrain) Base.
The war began on 28 February, when the US and Israel launched an unprovoked bombing campaign on the Islamic Republic that killed thousands of Iranians, including supreme leader Ali Khamenei, top military commanders, and civilians.
The war is currently paused, as Washington and Tehran reached a memorandum of understanding (MoU) last week, launching a 60-day negotiation period to end the conflict.
NSA Bahrain, which is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, lies just 240 kilometers south of Iran, making it a vulnerable target. Iran inflicted damage to the Fifth Fleet headquarters, a barracks, several warehouses, and a potable water tank, the WSJ revealed, citing satellite and social media images.
No US military personnel were killed at the base in Bahrain. However, 13 service members were killed across the region by Iranian strikes.
An analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) – a prominent Washington think tank – said that the cost of the damage inflicted may be much higher than the $400 million cited by the WSJ. For example, Iranian strikes successfully destroyed two satellite communication terminals costing some $20 million each.
The damage inflicted by Iran has prompted the US military to move command centers at NSA Bahrain underground and to decide against rebuilding some destroyed structures, according to current and former service members.
The US may also reduce its military presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, where Iran also targeted US forces.
These forces will be transferred to locations further west, including potentially to Israel.
During the war, dozens of US warplanes and refueling tankers were forced to operate out of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel's largest civilian airport.
In addition to redeploying its forces to Israel, Washington is quietly moving to integrate the US and Israeli militaries in unprecedented ways, according to a clause in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Section 224 of the NDAA, entitled “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” proposes bilateral defense research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and other US–Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation.
If implemented, the initiative could do more to intertwine the US army with the Israeli army than the more than $200 billion in military assistance Israel has received from the US since 1948, Responsible Statecraft (RS) wrote.
It is “the first step towards shifting aid further into the shadows” and “would all but fuse the two countries' armed forces together,” RS added.
For it to become law, both the House and the Senate must pass their respective versions of the NDAA. US President Donald Trump must then sign it.