On September 19, JINSA released a paper authored by its Hertog Distinguished Fellow and former CENTCOM Commander Gen Frank McKenzie, USMC (ret.) which concluded that there is a real risk of Iranian air and missile attack overwhelming U.S. military bases along the Arabian Gulf in a future conflict. According to Gen McKenzie, “our basing strategy is outdated and poorly positioned to meet the central threat in the region: Iran.”
The paper recommends that the United States work with regional partners—including Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, and Saudi Arabia—to identify bases as far to the west as possible where it can deploy military assets away from current high-risk U.S. bases along the Gulf, such as Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
The paper, U.S. Bases in the Middle East: Overcoming the Tyranny of Geography, lays out the risks inherent in America’s current basing structure in the Middle East, its vulnerabilities in a looming major conflict scenario with Iran, and steps the United States and its regional partners should take to address this strategic problem.
JINSA hosted a discussion about the paper’s conclusions and recommendations featuring Gen McKenzie and JINSA’s President and CEO Michael Makovsky, PhD.