Operation Epic Fury has revived the debate over the strategic value of U.S. military bases in the Middle East. During the war, Iran struck at least 20 U.S. military sites across eight countries, causing substantial damage and forcing U.S. service members to relocate to hotels and office spaces across the region. Tehran damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment, including hangars, barracks, aircraft, fuel depots, and air defense systems.
In response, Washington has already committed to rebuilding damaged bases, strengthening their defenses, and replacing destroyed equipment.
Operation Epic Fury has revived the debate over the strategic value of U.S. military bases in the Middle East. During the war, Iran struck at least 20 U.S. military sites across eight countries, causing substantial damage and forcing U.S. service members to relocate to hotels and office spaces across the region. Tehran damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment, including hangars, barracks, aircraft, fuel depots, and air defense systems.
In response, Washington has already committed to rebuilding damaged bases, strengthening their defenses, and replacing destroyed equipment.
This is a mistake.
The Iran war underscored a simple reality—the expansive U.S. military footprint in the Middle East is counterproductive. This war footing is not needed to secure U.S. interests, and it makes it far too easy for the United States to entangle itself in the region’s wars or for Washington to unilaterally initiate them. The costs of sustaining this posture outweigh any conceivable benefit. Instead of rebuilding, Washington should close its bases, leave the Middle East, and adopt a strategy of offshore balancing.
The United States’ massive military presence in the Middle East is a relatively recent phenomenon, evolving in tandem with its increased involvement in the region’s affairs. U.S. troops levels have fluctuated for decades, but today, the United States maintains on average roughly 40,000 to 45,000 troops across its disclosed military bases in the Middle East. There are also an undisclosed number of troops stationed at various forward operating bases across the region.
Proponents of deep U.S. engagement in the Middle East typically invoke two core interests to justify this presence: maintaining the free flow of oil and preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon. Yet neither objective requires a direct U.S. military presence in the region. This was true both prior to and after Operation Epic Fury.
For decades, Washington was convinced that a forward-deployed posture was needed to deter disruptions to energy supplies and, if necessary, secure the region’s export routes through force. Yet oil would continue to flow out of the Middle East even without a U.S. military presence. Regional governments have strong incentives to keep exports moving because their economic and political survival depends on oil revenue. Oil is also a global commodity, meaning the entire petroleum-consuming world has an interest in Middle Eastern oil reaching the market. For all these reasons, global markets have historically proved resilient.
In fact, Operation Epic Fury triggered the most feared oil disruption scenario—Tehran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, removing 20 percent of global oil supply from the market. The result was unprecedented but not catastrophic. Large prewar inventories, increased output by alternative producers, releases from strategic reserves, and regional rerouting helped blunt the shock. While these steps were insufficient to fully offset the strait’s closure, they demonstrated that global oil markets can deal with disruptions.
More importantly, this unprecedented disruption was a direct result of the U.S. decision to attack Iran. Tehran closed the strait as a measure of last resort after concluding its survival was at stake. Yet Washington proved unwilling to shoulder the enormous costs of attempting to forcibly reopen the waterway because its immediate exposure was limited. For the United States, this was a war of choice, and the resulting consequences were largely self-inflicted.
Should Iran attempt the same in the future without provocation, it would likely trigger a much stronger international response—particularly from China, which remains the largest importer of Middle Eastern oil. Such a strategy could also prove self-defeating for Iran over time, given the country’s continued economic reliance on the waterway. Ultimately, the future stability of the Persian Gulf depends on achieving a new regional equilibrium—one that includes Iran and reduces the incentives for coercion. Such a balance is more likely to endure if it is self-sustaining rather than imposed by the United States.
Closely tied to the oil rationale, Washington has long believed that the emergence of a regional hegemon in the Middle East could pose a long-term security threat. Here, too, the argument for maintaining a U.S. military presence in the region centers on the belief that it is a stabilizing force, deterring would-be aggressors. But this claim does not withstand scrutiny, either.
The Middle East lacks a hegemon because no single actor has the combined political, economic, and military prowess necessary for such dominance. This is true independent of U.S. involvement. The region is politically fragmented, economically diffuse, and geographically resistant to regional consolidation. No actor commands sufficient military power to overcome these barriers and subordinate its rivals, placing regional hegemony beyond the reach of any Middle Eastern state for the foreseeable future.
This includes Iran. The Islamic Republic lacks the political legitimacy, economic wealth, and conventional military superiority needed for regional hegemony. Operation Epic Fury did not change that reality. To be sure, Iran demonstrated its ability to withstand tremendous pressure, wield its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, and impose sufficient costs to compel Washington to change course. But this ability to resist coercion is not the same as the ability to dominate the region. Tehran remains politically isolated, economically constrained, and conventionally weak. Iran is an important regional power, but it is one among many. Recognizing this reality is necessary to defuse tensions between Tehran and Washington.
The U.S. military presence in the Middle East is not only unnecessary—it actively undermines U.S. interests by encouraging the country’s overreliance on force and entangling it in the region’s conflicts.
The current U.S. posture incentivizes Washington to treat military force as a first rather than last resort. By reducing many of the logistical and political constraints that would otherwise complicate or discourage military action, the network of U.S. bases lowers the threshold for using coercion at the expense of diplomacy. As a result, the United States has too often initiated or directly inserted itself into unnecessary Middle Eastern wars. These include virtually all of the region’s most consequential recent conflicts—Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and, of course, Iran.
The vast and enduring U.S. military footprint in the Middle East entangles Washington in conflicts it might otherwise avoid. It limits strategic flexibility, often forcing U.S. policy to be reactive and respond to events as they unfold. Washington’s partners recognize this, and they often pursue riskier policies than they otherwise would, confident that they can draw the United States in to protect them from the consequences.
Even when they pursue polices at odds with U.S. interests, military cooperation continues largely uninterrupted through U.S. Central Command’s constant involvement in regional security coordination. This dynamic played out with the Saudi-Emirati war in Yemen as well as Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The result is a vicious cycle that entraps the United States in the Middle East.
A strategy ofoffshore balancing would remedy these problems. Under this approach, the United States would eliminate its direct military presence in the Middle East, relinquish its role as the region’s primary security guarantor, and shift responsibility for regional security to local actors. Washington would still engage the region diplomatically and economically, but it would move to an over-the-horizon military posture and intervene only in the event that a meaningful challenge to U.S. regional interests emerged.
By distancing itself politically and militarily from the Middle East, this strategy would allow the United States to be more selective in the regional issues it chooses to respond to—an option currently constrained by its expansive presence and self-imposed role as the regional police. It would increase U.S. strategic autonomy, allowing Washington to engage the Middle East solely on its own terms rather than constantly managing the region.
Shifting to offshore balancing is likely to foster greater regional cooperation because the United States would not be there to absorb the costs of its partners’ policies. Persistent U.S. involvement in the region’s affairs has contributed to an artificial power imbalance by insulating partners from the policy trade-offs that typically constrain other states. By shielding them from the political, economic, and security consequences of their actions, Washington discourages them from finding a stable equilibrium with their neighbors. Offshore balancing would also reduce the U.S. exposure to blowback, be it in the form of direct attacks or unnecessary tensions with avoidable adversaries.
The consequences of Operation Epic Fury should prompt a long-overdue reassessment of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Maintaining this presence is not worth the profound strategic, economic, or human costs that the United States incurs to sustain it. The better course for Washington is to bring the troops home.