For decades, the United States has kept its military might planted firmly in the Persian Gulf massive bases, roaring fleets, and thousands of troops stationed just hundreds of kilometres from Iranian shores, according to an article published in Dawn News. It felt like a show of strength. Now, after a punishing wave of Iranian missile and drone strikes, that presence feels less like power and more like vulnerability.
The strikes came after the United States and Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran on February 28. Iran struck back hard. When the smoke began to clear, American and allied military installations across the Middle East were left battered, bleeding, and in some cases, simply gone.
Thirteen American service members were killed. Hundreds more were wounded. The full accounting of the dead and injured has not yet been released publicly, a silence that speaks volumes.
Among the hardest hit was Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the proud headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Sitting just 240 kilometres south of Iran, the base was never truly out of reach. Strikes tore through its headquarters building, barracks, warehouses, and water facilities. The bill? Around $400 million in damage and that may be a conservative estimate.
The American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, painted an even grimmer picture: roughly $5 billion in damage spread across 70 structures, at 11 US installations, in 7 different countries. In a single conflict, Iran had done what years of diplomatic pressure never could, it had made America flinch.
Now, behind closed doors, Washington is asking a question it rarely entertains: Should we stay?
Options on the table include burying command centres underground at Bahrain, hardening what remains, and quietly abandoning what cannot be saved. Discussions are also underway about pulling back from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and shifting military weight further west, possibly all the way to Israel, where US aircraft have already been operating out of Ben Gurion Airport.
It is not a retreat, officials would insist. But it is, undeniably, a reckoning, a hard look at what fixed bases cost when the enemy has missiles, patience, and nothing left to lose.
