AGENCIES

At least a dozen US military sites across the Gulf region have been so badly damaged by Iran’s retaliation to US and Israeli attacks that their presence now creates significantly more vulnerabilities than it does benefits, a slate of Middle East experts argued on Thursday.

The original revelation about the state of the bases was first reported in The New York Times last month, in which they were described as “all but uninhabitable”. The Trump administration has yet to acknowledge the extent of the damage sustained.

“This is the physical architecture of American primacy, and Iran has essentially rendered it useless in the span of a month,” Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University, said at the Arab Center Washington DC’s annual conference.

“We are not seeing a full and accurate reporting of the extent of damage that has been done to US bases in the region,” he added.

Access to these sites - some of which are logistical hubs and not necessarily active bases - is tightly controlled by both the Pentagon and the Gulf states themselves: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, reports Middle East Eye online.

Gulf leaders had previously pledged not to permit the US to use bases on their territory for the war.

“The bases around the region are suffering real damage, and I think it’s very unlikely that we’re ever going to go back and put our Fifth Fleet back in Bahrain. It’s too vulnerable,” Lynch added.