In 2022, the US constructed a military base near Yanbu, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. Activity at the base surged during the US-Israeli war on Iran, as Iranian missiles and drones slammed into US bases closer to the Islamic Republic’s shores, current and former US officials tell Middle East Eye.
“The whole point of LSA Jenkins is to support the Iran strategy by providing strategic depth beyond the immediate proximity of Iran’s shores,” Abbas Dahouk, a former US defence and army attache to Saudi Arabia, told Middle East Eye, using the acronym for the Logistical Support Area Jenkins base.
Iran is demanding the closure of US military bases in the region as part of any longterm ceasefire. While the US is unlikely to meet that demand, the effectiveness of Iranian missiles and drones targeting US bases, with the help of Chinese and Russian satellites, is raising questions about the future of big, bulky US bases in the Gulf, US officials and analysts familiar with the matter told MEE.
In sum, the US may not even want to return to some of the very bases that Iran is demanding the US exit.
“The truth is that we are not as inclined to occupy these bases now that we have seen what the Iranians can throw at them,” David Petraeus, a former director of the CIA and head of all US military forces in the Middle East, told Bloomberg in May. “This is much more than when I was commander at Central Command.”
