Can Iran Break the Political Foundations of US Power in the Middle East?

 Iran does not Need to Expel the US from the Gulf. It only Needs to Make the American-Led Regional Order progressively More Precarious, Expensive and Politically Untenable

Kautilya The Contemplator 

 

 

A week ago, I argued in my essay Why Iranian Missiles Alone Will Not End America’s Presence in the Middle East that Iran is unlikely dislodge American power from the Middle East through missile strikes against US military bases alone. The latter are not ordinary real estate, but geopolitical assets embedded within a dense network of political relationships, security partnerships and strategic investments that have been built over decades.

This essay further builds on that argument by trying to answer the following question: if Iran cannot compel a US withdrawal through military force alone, can it gradually increase the political costs of America’s military presence to the point that the political foundations that sustain it begin to shift?

To answer this question, it may be useful to examine how past oversees military deployments have actually ended. If the history of the last seventy years is any guide, military bases have rarely closed because they were physically destroyed. Instead, their closure has largely followed political decisions that terminated the military presence. As such, understanding the politics that sustain US power in the Middle East is more important than the destructive power of Iranian missiles.

How US Overseas Military Deployments End

Figure 1 illustrates the primary mechanisms through which US overseas military deployments have ended between 1955 and 2025. Forty-eight significant base closures were identified during this period. Of these, thirty-one (or 65 percent) resulted from political decisions by host governments, making sovereign political choice by far the most common mechanism through which American military deployments have ended.

The historical examples are striking. In 1966, President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command while remaining part of the alliance. He then required NATO headquarters and foreign forces to leave French territory, leading to the relocation of SHAPE headquarters to Brussels and the withdrawal of US forces. In 1992, the Philippine Senate rejected renewal of the Military Bases Agreement, leading to the closure of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base. Similar sovereign decisions later brought about the closure of major American military installations in Panama, Ecuador, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Thailand.

 

 

A further six cases (~13 percent) followed revolutions or the collapse of allied governments. Muammar Gaddafi’s seizure of power in Libya in 1969 led to the closure of the Wheelus Air Base. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran ended the presence of the US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in the country and the closure of three American signals intelligence stations. More recently in 2024, Niger’s military government revoked its defense cooperation agreement with the United States, requiring the withdrawal of approximately 1,000 US military personnel and the evacuation of Air Base 101 in Niamey and Air Base 201 in Agadez.

A small number of cases resulted from military defeat. In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the United States ultimately lost its extensive network of military bases following the collapse of the governments it supported. However, here also, the bases were not rendered unusable through military destruction. Instead, they were abandoned as part of a broader political decision to end prolonged wars whose strategic and domestic costs had come to outweigh the anticipated benefits. Once US forces withdrew, the bases were taken over by their adversaries.

The Political Foundations of American Power

The historical record suggests that US military deployments would endure as long as host countries found the benefits derived from their presence outweighing the political costs. In the Gulf, there may be four foundations of US power that are interrelated.

Regional Security Architecture

Following the outbreak of war in February 2026, numerous commentators have stated that the US bases do not provide any security umbrella for the Gulf states. From the standpoint of these governments, however, the network of US bases has underwritten a regional security order for four decades that individual Gulf states cannot readily replace. None of those states have the intelligence networks, command-and-control systems and power projection capabilities required to secure the region independently. Hosting American forces thus reflects participation in a collective security arrangement that distributes deterrence across the region.

Economic Underwriting

The American forces have enabled the Gulf countries to pursue an economic model that is considerably less expensive relative to strategic self-reliance. Instead of building the military and logistics capabilities required to secure the region independently, governments have been able to direct vast financial resources toward sovereign wealth funds, economic diversification and ambitious development projects. In this sense, from the perspective of the Gulf governments, the American security umbrella functions also as an economic enabler.

Political Stability

The US presence reinforces a political model whose legitimacy depends less on popular participation than on continued stability, prosperity and elite cohesion. Gulf monarchies have remained remarkably resilient, but that resilience rests on their ability to provide security, rising living standards and economic opportunity while insulating their societies from regional instability. Hosting US forces has therefore been viewed as an instrument for preserving the domestic conditions upon which regime legitimacy depends.

Strategic Coordination

The bases substitute for the absence of a Gulf security community. Although the monarchies broadly share concerns about regional stability, they have not created a collective defense organization capable of coordinating military planning across the region. American bases, therefore, reduce the political coordination problems that would otherwise exist among the Gulf states. Without that external coordinating role, regional security would depend on a level of strategic trust and military integration that has yet to emerge.

If history demonstrates that oversees military deployments usually end when these political foundations change, the central question is whether Iran possesses the ability to erode them.

Can Iran Dismantle These Political Foundations?

Undermining the Security Relationship

The first political foundation is the security relationship itself. For Iran to weaken America’s regional position, it would need to convince the governments that the costs of hosting US forces exceed the security benefits they receive.

Despite Iranian retaliations on military and civilian infrastructure, the available evidence to date suggests that the Gulf states continue to deepen their military integration with the US. In March 2026, less than three weeks after the war began, the US State Department approved a $8.4 billion Foreign Military Sale (FMS) to the UAE comprising interceptor missiles, armed drones, advanced air defense radars and F-16 fighter upgrades and munitions. The same announcement approved around $8 billion for Kuwait in missile-defense radars.

In fact, during the first quarter of 2026, of the $45 billion worldwide in FMS approved by the US government, the Gulf countries accounted for 81 percent of that amount. While a prolonged campaign against Gulf infrastructure could eventually shift regional political calculations, the evidence to date suggests that Iran is reinforcing, rather than undermining the US–Gulf security relationship.

Raising the Economic Costs of Hosting US Forces

This is where Iran may possess the most leverage. Tehran can raise the economic costs of America’s regional presence by threatening shipping, energy infrastructure and investor confidence. Exerting control over the Strait of Hormuz is the critical leverage that Iran wields. It aims to convince regional governments and global markets that continued confrontation with Tehran carries mounting economic costs.

Following the outbreak of war earlier this year, Lloyds of London launched a $400 million marine war-risk insurance facility, reflecting expectations of sustained commercial risk in the region. Premiums for vessels transiting the strait rose significantly, several Gulf states were designated high-risk maritime areas and shipping companies temporarily suspended Gulf operations.

While Iran has demonstrated an ability to raise the economic costs of the existing security order, there is little evidence that these costs have translated into a weakening of the US-Gulf security relationship. A longer drawn-out conflict with repeated disruptions to maritime trade and Gulf energy infrastructure could eventually alter that calculation.

Changing Domestic Political Considerations

This is perhaps Iran’s most difficult objective. The Gulf monarchies derive much of their legitimacy from a rentier social contract. Under this mechanism, governments use revenues to provide public employment, infrastructure, education, healthcare and high living standards in exchange for stability.

Research from the IMF suggests that in Kuwait, 80 percent of employed nationals work for the public sector, where wages are 40-60 percent higher than comparable private sector jobs. The public-sector wage bill exceeds 31 percent of GDP, one of the highest in the world.

Iran’s more plausible pathway could be one of economic attrition. If repeated attacks on energy infrastructure and maritime trade were to significantly reduce government revenues over time, Gulf states could find it increasingly difficult to sustain the patronage and public spending that underpin domestic stability. Since these benefits form the basis of the Gulf’s rentier social contract, sustained fiscal retrenchment could gradually weaken government legitimacy and increase domestic political pressures because the state could no longer finance the economic bargain on which political stability rests.

Fracturing the Regional Coalition

Disrupting the current strategic alignment of the Gulf countries with the United States is likely a long-term objective for Iran. If Gulf governments increasingly conclude that accommodation with Tehran offers greater stability than confrontation, the political foundations of the American military presence could gradually weaken without a single base being destroyed.

There is some precedent to this strategy. In March 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations through a China-brokered agreement that revived earlier security cooperation. It committed both sides to respect sovereignty and reduce regional tensions. Since then, Gulf states have sought to balance deterrence with dialogue, recognizing that geography makes coexistence with Iran unavoidable.

The evidence, however, thus far suggests that the current conflict has reinforced rather than fractured the regional coalition. While the Saudis and the Emiratis continue to pursue diplomatic engagement with Tehran, they have simultaneously deepened security cooperation with the United States, reflecting a strategy of deterrence and diplomacy instead of strategic alignment.

Implications for the Current War

There are several implications from this analysis. First, time increasingly favors Iran even though there is yet no evidence that points to otherwise. At present, Iran has not weakened the political foundations of the American military presence in the Gulf. Its strategy is likely to focus on gradually increasing the political and economic costs of sustaining the existing regional order.

The conflict is thus becoming a contest over political risk instead of military power. Iran’s objective is to convince Gulf governments, investors, insurance and shipping companies that continued confrontation carries mounting economic consequences. Military strikes become a means of generating political and financial uncertainty rather than an end in themselves.

The principal battleground is likely to shift from military bases to the economic infrastructure underpinning Gulf prosperity. Oil and LNG export facilities, ports, electricity networks, desalination plants and the Strait of Hormuz because they affect investment, trade, insurance costs and government revenues. A prolonged cycle of US strikes followed by Iranian retaliation could thus expose Gulf partners to increasing economic costs, prompting regional governments to question whether continued confrontation is enhancing security or inadvertently increasing insecurity.

The most significant implication, however, is that Iran's measure of success differs fundamentally from that of the United States. Success need not be defined by forcing an American withdrawal from the Gulf. A more attainable objective is to progressively erode the strategic advantages of the existing security framework by raising insurance premiums, discouraging foreign investment, increasing the cost of maritime commerce and encouraging Gulf governments to place greater emphasis on accommodation alongside deterrence. In that sense, Iran's strategy is one of gradually making the American-led regional order more politically and economically costly to sustain.