US military assets in the Persian Gulf region need to be relocated to Israel and its neighboring countries to protect them from Iranian missile and drone attacks. Former US Central Command chief General Frank McKenzie made the comment during a webinar last week.
Referring to Qatar’s Al Udeid air base, he said: “No sane person would place CENTCOM’s forward headquarters just 100 miles from Iran [in Qatar]. Yet that is exactly where it is today.”
McKenzie, who served as the top US military commander in the Middle East from March 28, 2019, to April 1, 2022, said he and other officials warned the Biden administration in 2022. They said US bases in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain were highly vulnerable to Iranian attack, and that US forces should be moved westward, particularly to Israel.
“We proposed to the Biden administration that they consider moving the bases westward, including to Israel and Egypt, so that if war broke out with Iran, we could quickly shift west,” McKenzie said. However, the Biden administration rejected the proposal.
He added that the current US basing arrangement in the Middle East is a continuation of the past — largely a Cold War-era legacy, when the United States was concerned about potential Soviet aggression toward the oil-rich Arab Gulf states. These bases were later used during US counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The US’s current strategy does not match realities on the ground,” McKenzie said.
Noting that satellite imagery makes it difficult to accurately assess damage to a base, McKenzie warned: “Even if a base’s hangars, radar or barracks are destroyed, its underground fuel systems and runway may remain intact, allowing fighter jets to still take off and land. The situation now is such that being close to the enemy is good, because you can join a fight quickly — but it’s also bad, because the enemy can strike you very quickly too.”
McKenzie did, however, favor maintaining a US presence in the Gulf states to preserve solidarity with Arab allies. His proposal is that the US could use Gulf bases solely for refueling purposes, while choosing Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast as long-term basing locations.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report