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During its war with the United States, Iran has targeted Middle East bases where American troops are stationed, turning assets once seen as a bulwark against Tehran into targets.
Below, AFP examines some of the major concentrations of US forces in the region, which fall under the US military’s Central Command (Centcom).
Elizabeth Dent, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Middle East bases housing US troops “can support a wide range of missions from logistics, pre-positioning assets, refuelling, and of course combat operations”.
Iran, in justifying its own retaliatory strikes, has accused Gulf states of allowing the US to use the bases to launch attacks, which Dent said was likely, though Tehran’s “perennial argument that all of these bases are inherently offensive is not accurate”.
