U.S. military and intelligence officials are quietly considering a significant reduction in America’s permanent military footprint across the Middle East once the war with Iran ends, potentially cutting troop levels in Gulf countries, abandoning heavily damaged facilities and shifting more of the region’s defense burden to U.S. allies, CNN reports.

The discussions remain informal, with no official force-posture review ordered by President Trump or the Pentagon. But officials have developed several potential options that could begin as early as next year, as Washington considers what its presence in the region should look like after months of fighting exposed serious vulnerabilities at American bases. Roughly 50,000 U.S. troops remain in the Middle East, along with two aircraft carriers and more than a dozen guided-missile destroyers.

Iranian missile and drone attacks have inflicted significant damage on American installations across the Gulf. U.S. facilities in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have all been struck, while a CIA facility in Riyadh was “effectively destroyed,” according to a U.S. official and a former intelligence officer. Previous assessments found that Iranian strikes damaged at least 16 U.S. military installations across eight countries, leaving some virtually unusable.

The scale of the damage has prompted the Pentagon to consider moving portions of its remaining infrastructure underground to better protect personnel and critical equipment from future missile and drone attacks. Officials are also weighing whether it makes financial or strategic sense to rebuild some installations that suffered extensive damage during the war.

Some CIA and U.S. special operations officials are examining an even more dramatic change: conducting sensitive missions without maintaining permanent bases in the region. Under such an approach, personnel and equipment could remain in the United States, deploy to the Middle East for individual missions and return home afterward. Senior Pentagon officials have also privately expressed interest in reducing the U.S. presence in several Gulf countries and placing greater responsibility for regional defense on American partners.

Despite those discussions, a large-scale withdrawal is far from certain. Officials expect the United States to retain some major permanent bases in the Middle East, and Washington remains deeply engaged in the ongoing confrontation with Tehran. Iran continues to target American forces, while U.S. forces continue operations in and around the Strait of Hormuz and against Iranian infrastructure. There is also no clear timetable for ending the war.

The debate nevertheless underscores how dramatically the Iran war has changed American calculations in the region. Bases that for decades provided Washington with a powerful platform for projecting military force have themselves become prime targets for Iranian missiles and drones, forcing U.S. officials to reconsider where American forces should be stationed, how they should be protected and how much of the enormous post-9/11 military infrastructure should remain once the fighting ends.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)