Iran's Missile Reach Turns America's Overseas Bases from Power Multipliers into Target Lists

The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed a structural inversion: bases built to project American power now provide adversaries with a menu of high-value targets, forcing Washington and its allies into a security dilemma with no clean exit.

For decades, the global network of US military bases operated on an unspoken premise: they were untouchable. Positioned in allied nations from Britain to Bahrain, they functioned as force multipliers — launchpads for power projection that simultaneously reassured host countries with an American security guarantee. The war on Iran that began in February 2026 has shattered that premise. Iranian missiles and drones have damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures across US installations in eight countries, killed service members, and rendered some facilities nearly unusable. The base network built to project power has become, in the words of analysts, a liability.

The damage inventory is stark. A Pentagon inspector general report from September revealed destruction across Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan. Six US service members were killed at Kuwait's Port of Shuaiba. At least five KC-135 aerial refuelling tankers were hit at Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan airbase. Iran damaged the early warning radar system at Al Udeid in Qatar — home to CENTCOM's air operations headquarters — and struck communications equipment at the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Aviation facilities at Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait were damaged. These are not peripheral installations; they are the nerve centres of American military architecture in the Middle East. The threat has extended far beyond the Gulf. In Britain, the US pulled all 12 B-1 Lancer bombers from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire after British security forces arrested individuals allegedly linked to an Iranian plot against the base. Days later, a dozen aircraft were withdrawn from RAF Mildenhall. An Iranian drone hit a hangar at a British base in Cyprus used by the US for intelligence and logistics. Bulgaria expelled US air tankers from Bezmer airbase after Iranian threats, with its president declaring the "mission is over." The geographic scope of vulnerability now stretches from the Persian Gulf to the English countryside. The core dilemma is structural, not tactical. Cheap Iranian drones inflict disproportionate damage while exhausting far more expensive interceptor missiles — an economic asymmetry that favours the attacker. As Mark Hilborne of King's College London notes, "large bases are indeed becoming more easily targeted." Urban Coningham of RUSI adds that the threat actor pool has expanded: "Anyone can manufacture a drone in a basement." The calculus that made fixed forward bases viable — that the host nation faced greater threats without them than with them — is inverting. Iran explicitly cited the presence of US bases as justification for striking Gulf neighbours, meaning the security umbrella itself became the threat vector. For Gulf states, the bind is particularly acute. Their oil and gas exports — the foundation of their economies — are disrupted by war and blockade. US bases were supposed to protect those exports. Instead, Iran targeted the bases and the exports simultaneously, and the host countries had no say in starting the conflict. As analyst Mohammad Ali Shabani puts it: Gulf states "have not sought war, yet have been drawn into it without having had any real say." The US naval blockade remains in place and Strait of Hormuz shipping has not normalised, meaning the economic damage persists even as President Trump declared further military action unnecessary. The emerging US response compounds the problem rather than solving it. Washington is reportedly shifting military assets toward Israel and Jordan while drawing down from Gulf bases. CENTCOM may increasingly use Israel as a forward base — a move that would deepen the identification of US regional military posture with the country that co-launched the war, further alienating Gulf allies who are already reconsidering the bargain. Coningham frames the long-term answer as working with partners to "ensure that allied forces are ready to fend for themselves," but decades of security dependency cannot be unwound quickly, and no Gulf state has the independent capability to replace what US bases provided. The 20-year trajectory is a slow unwinding of the post-Cold War base architecture. If cheap precision munitions continue to improve — and every trend says they will — fixed forward bases become increasingly expensive to defend and increasingly dangerous to host. The US either invests massively in base defence (accepting diminishing returns against improving threats), disperses its forces into smaller, harder-to-target postures, or retreats to over-the-horizon capability that sacrifices the rapid-response advantage bases were built to provide. Host nations, meanwhile, must decide whether the American security umbrella is worth the target it paints on their territory. That question, once unthinkable, is now the central strategic calculation from Gloucestershire to Doha.