Foreign Affairs - Iran and the Hidden Cost of Wartime Access Overseas Bases Make the U.S. Military Dominant—and More Likely to Blunder Into War - Rachel Metz - June 5, 2026

Foreign  Affairs 

Iran and the Hidden Cost of Wartime Access

Overseas Bases Make the U.S. Military Dominant—and More Likely to Blunder Into War

Rachel Metz

June 5, 2026

A U.S. Air Force aircraft taking off from a base in the Middle East, March 2026

U.S. Air Force

RACHEL METZ is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University.

The Trump administration’s motivations for going to war in Iran remain in question. But amid all the debates over the state of the Iranian nuclear program and the condition of the regime, one crucial factor has been overlooked: the United States launched a war more than 6,000 miles from its borders because it could.

States—even those with large and capable militaries—are supposed to struggle to project military power far away. Guns and aircraft have limited ranges, and it is difficult to resupply a distant front. Yet in the past year alone, the U.S. military has struck targets in Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Since World War II, the United States has fought wars or conducted major combat operations in countries including (but not limited to) Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, and Vietnam. That the United States can bring overwhelming firepower to bear anywhere in the world is something that Americans and the rest of the world have come to take for granted.

The U.S. military has overcome the barrier of distance in large part because countries across the world allow it to use their territory to fight wars. Uzbekistan, for example, let the United States stage the special operations units that invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Pakistan permitted the logistics and intelligence operations that facilitated and sustained large-scale combat throughout the war. Washington launched its 2003 invasion of Iraq from Kuwaiti territory, and special operations units entered western Iraq via Jordan. When the U.S. Air Force carried out Operation El Dorado Canyon against the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime in 1986, U.S. attack aircraft flew from bases in British territory. Operation Epic Fury is no exception to this long-standing tradition. Host states have allowed the U.S. military to transport its vast combat power through their borders on its way from distant home bases to the Middle East. They have allowed U.S. Navy replenishment ships to load up in their ports to resupply aircraft carriers. And they have allowed the U.S. Air Force to fly sorties from inside their borders against targets in Iran.

When states consider starting a war, one of the factors they consider is whether they can achieve their military objectives at an acceptable cost. Untrammeled wartime access makes it possible for the United States to wage war far away and reduces the costs Washington incurs in the process. The ability to wage war relatively easily around the world can be a good thing. Knowing the U.S. military could get within striking distance could make states otherwise tempted to attack their neighbors reconsider. But increasing the feasibility and reducing the costs of war can also encourage the United States to default to military action, even when it is unclear whether doing so is the best way to advance the country’s political objectives. In short, permissive wartime access increases the odds that the United States wages unwise wars.

After the war with Iran, states may begin to rethink that permissiveness. The United States was unable to shield its Gulf partners fully from Iranian missiles and drones, and other partners may fear becoming similarly vulnerable. If Washington can no longer count on wartime access, it may lose its global reach—but an extra barrier to military action could help keep the United States out of ill-advised wars.

HOMES AWAY FROM HOME

In theory, states should struggle to project military power far away for two main reasons. First, most weapons systems have highly restrictive range limitations. Guns cannot hit their targets across oceans. Aircraft cannot travel very far without refueling, and pilots cannot fly very far before they will need a bathroom and a rest. To use their short-range systems, states must first erase the distance between them and the adversary.

Second, combat operations require support; in military terminology, tooth requires tail. Large-scale combat operations expend huge amounts of fuel and ammunition. Tanks and aircraft need maintenance and spare parts. Soldiers need food and water, medical assistance, and evacuation. Sustaining combat operations requires high volumes of cargo, large numbers of replenishment vehicles to carry the cargo, and crews to operate them. The greater the distance from the depots to the front, the longer the supply lines and the more transport assets required. Even large and capable militaries can quickly hit the limit of their logistical capacity, particularly when they prioritize flashier combat systems over unglamorous support capabilities.

The United States has managed to overcome these obstacles. It has formally acquired strategically located territory such as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands and invested in long-range weapons systems and naval aviation. But wartime access—decisions by states to allow the United States to fight wars from inside their borders—has been the foundation of Washington’s strategy to project and sustain combat power in all corners of the world.

In theory, states should struggle to project military power far away.

States grant wartime access when they allow militaries to transit their territory and conduct combat and combat support operations from inside their borders. States can restrict access in several ways. They can, for example, allow support operations but not combat operations, or defensive operations but not offensive operations. They can allow access to airspace and nothing else. They can deny wartime access altogether.

Since World War II, the United States has operated from or owned hundreds of military bases and installations around the world. States that allow the U.S. military to operate from inside their borders in peacetime often allow it to fight wars from inside their borders, as well. And many states from which the United States military does not operate in peacetime have granted the United States wartime access. The United States had few basing arrangements with the neighbors of landlocked Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks but secured wartime access from Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Qatar, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates to launch Operation Enduring Freedom. Washington’s plans for a potential showdown with China over Taiwan hinge on access to bases in Australia, Japan, and potentially the Philippines and South Korea.

Wartime access puts the vast firepower of the U.S. military’s short-range systems within range of the adversary and shortens supply lines to make sustainment possible. In essence, it makes every state in the world—no matter how far from American shores—the United States’ next-door neighbor.

GUESTS OF THE GULF

As it has in in every far-flung combat operation since World War II, Washington has taken full advantage of its empire of access during the war in Iran. States have not been particularly forthright about their decisions to let the U.S. military fight Iran from within their borders. But the movement of U.S. military assets in the region is evidence in itself. In February, the United States conducted its largest military buildup in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The U.S. Air Force transported hundreds of aircraft from bases in the United States and Europe to the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan with support from cargo and refueling aircraft that touched down at bases along the way, in a massive “airbridge.” From there, the aircraft were dispersed to bases across the Middle East. F-22s and F-35s have flown from runways at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military installation in the region, and Al Dhafra Airbase in the UAE, an aviation hub during the war. Other fighter jets and logistics and sustainment aircraft have flown from bases in Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets have also operated from bases in Kuwait and the UAE. 

Wartime access has made the naval elements of Operation Epic Fury possible, too. The USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald Ford, for example, are operating in international waters in the Arabian Sea, but their presence owes in part to the states that host the ports from which U.S. ships replenish fuel, ammunition, maintenance services, and spare parts. When the USS Ford was incapacitated by a fire, it left the region for Croatia, eventually docking at the Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, a U.S. Navy installation on the Greek island of Crete, where it underwent maintenance and repairs. Although exact details remain murky, the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would almost certainly be impossible without access to ports in or near the region.

Bases inside foreign states have also supported the surge of U.S. ground forces into the region. In April, as the Trump administration considered ground operations, thousands of U.S. marines and approximately 1,000 U.S. Army soldiers were deployed to undisclosed locations in the Middle East.

ACCESS DENIED

Wartime access has not always been straightforward for Washington. Turkey shocked the United States when it refused to allow U.S. forces to open a northern front against Iraq in 2003. Pakistan greatly complicated coalition operations in Afghanistan in 2011 when it closed the ground lines of communication connecting the port of Karachi to Afghanistan. And not all U.S. allies and partners have welcomed the U.S. military during the war against Iran. Spain emphatically denied the U.S. military access to jointly operated bases at Rota and Morón in the early days of the campaign, and in late March, it closed its airspace to the U.S. military. According to U.S. President Donald Trump, France did the same. Italy denied landing rights to several U.S. bombers at the Sigonella base in eastern Sicily. In Turkey, only Patriot air defense systems and airborne warning and control systems to defend Turkish airspace have been active during the war, and Ankara has publicly denied granting access for combat operations. Given Turkey’s location next to Iran, the U.S. military almost certainly would have been conducting such operations from the Incirlik Air Base if it had had Turkey’s permission.

Others have wavered before ultimately relenting. After airing their desire to avoid a war, most of the Gulf states decided to grant Washington wartime access once the war was underway. Switzerland rejected several U.S. requests to use its airspace in the opening weeks of the war but approved other flyover requests. After some rhetorical equivocation in early March by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the United Kingdom has allowed U.S. aircraft to operate from bases on its soil.

On the whole, Washington’s military operations have benefited greatly from allies’ and partners’ grudging but ultimately permissive attitudes toward access during the war. The allies and partners themselves have not.

Wartime access has not always been straightforward for Washington.

When states decide to allow other states to fight wars from inside their borders, they decide to make their states part of the battlefield. For Gulf states, the proximity to Iran that makes these countries valuable for U.S. power projection also makes them vulnerable to retaliation.

And retaliate Iran has. Since the opening days of the war, it has fired more than 5,000 missiles and drones at targets in the region. Initial strikes focused on the bases and military infrastructure from which U.S. forces operate. Iranian missiles and drones have hit an array of such installations, including Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Ali Al Salem Air Base and Camp Buehring in Kuwait, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Naval Support Activity Bahrain, and the ports of Duqm and Salalah in Oman. The United Arab Emirates has absorbed the worst of Iranian retaliation, having intercepted close to 3,000 Iranian drone and missile strikes since the beginning of the conflict, according to the Emirati Ministry of Defense. The UAE’s Al Dhafra Air Base, a major hub for U.S. forces in the conflict, was one of Iran’s first targets. Tehran has since hit critical infrastructure within states viewed as abetting the U.S.-Israeli war effort, including desalination plants in Bahrain and civilian population centers in the Gulf. Its latest barrage, on June 3, put Kuwait’s main airport out of commission.

Iran’s goal is twofold: to disrupt U.S. military operations against Iran and to coerce host governments into throwing the United States out. It appears to have partially succeeded at the former; U.S. forces have been forced to leave damaged bases and fall back to improvised locations. It has failed at the latter. Instead of distancing themselves from Washington, many of the hosting states that came under attack reduced restrictions on access to facilitate their own defense and enable U.S. forces to retaliate on their behalf. The UAE, for its part, has joined the United States and Israel in conducting strikes against Iran. In future conflicts, however, the lesson that other states may take from the Gulf’s experience is that granting wartime access is too dangerous to risk.

INSECURITY GUARANTEE

Since World War II, the states that have allowed the United States to fight wars from inside their borders could do so with confidence that they would be protected from retaliation. Few of the countries that gave the U.S. military access to fight the Islamic State (or ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, to invade Iraq before that, or to drive Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991 faced significant retaliation from the United States’ adversaries. U.S. forces could defend access-granting states from retaliation because of their overwhelming numerical and technological superiority relative to its adversaries and because the military technology of the day favored the technologically superior defender. For instance, the United States could neutralize the threat posed by the Iraqi air force to Turkey in the first Gulf War by stationing its own superior fighter aircraft at Incirlik in the lead-up to and during Desert Storm.

The proliferation of cheap drones and the difficulty that even powerful militaries have had intercepting them suggests that access-granting states will face increased risk of retaliation—and that the U.S. promise to shield them might not be as ironclad as it once was. It costs significantly less to make ballistic missiles and Shahed drones at scale than it does to build the systems necessary to intercept them. Even if the United States retains its military dominance, it will struggle to protect access-granting states if adversaries adopt Iran’s strategy of launching a flurry of missiles and drones at countries aiding the U.S. war effort. States may think twice before granting wartime access to the United States out of fear that they, too, could face a similarly unrelenting attack.

If the United States were to take on a more formidable foe, it could find it even more difficult to reassure host states. Consider a hypothetical Taiwan defense scenario. U.S. plans for the defense of Taiwan against a Chinese invasion hinge on wartime access to bases in Australia and Japan (and potentially the Philippines and South Korea, as well). Canberra, Tokyo, Manila, and Seoul will need to consider how allowing the U.S. Air Force to fly from runways within their borders could tempt the China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force to rain missiles on their military infrastructure. Because the United States has limited ability to neutralize Chinese missiles short of highly escalatory steps such as attacking satellites or conducting strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland, intervention to defend Taiwan from inside the borders of Indo-Pacific allies and partners would make those access-granting states vulnerable to retaliation from Beijing.

Someday, Washington may not seek to project military power all over the world.

If Washington wants to continue to project military power around the world, it will need to consider how it can better protect its hosts. States might demand credible assurances of protection before they let the U.S. military in. In some cases, the American military may be able to offer those assurances and still defeat its adversary—after all, the United States still retains an overwhelming military advantage over most of the world. But in others, the United States could find itself unable to protect its hosts, who may decide that aligning with Washington is not worth the cost of retaliation.

Someday, Washington may not routinely seek to project military power all over the world. Indeed, there are good arguments that with its friendly neighbors and the vast oceans separating it from its adversaries, the United States would be more secure if it fell back. But if states begin to deny wartime access in large numbers, Washington’s decision could be made for it. The U.S. military would lose the ability to show up on the doorstep of any country in the world—and the American military hegemony that has defined the postwar era would come to an end.

That may ultimately be a blessing. If war were harder to wage, perhaps Washington would wage fewer unwise wars.