Operation “Epic Fury”: The failure of the USA in the Iran War

Operation “Epic Fury” has long since proven to be a fatal mistake by the United States. Before American forces attacked Iran in late February, Donald Trump had ignored concerns that the regime in Tehran could use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage despite the United States' military superiority. That's exactly how it happened. The strait, which is important for global trade and oil transport, is repeatedly blocked, and the counter-blockade of Iranian ports by the American Navy does not help. The Iranians know how to harm the American president just before November's congressional elections.

Seven months after the start of the Iran war, however, it is about much more than just tactical games by the rump regime in Tehran. America's failure has a dimension that goes beyond the electoral calendar. Iranian missiles and drones have damaged American military bases in the region to a much greater extent than Washington initially disclosed. And in this failure lies the potential to reorder the entire Middle East.

As we now know, Iran destroyed American fuel depots and ship repair yards, hit high-tech command centers and reduced residential areas to rubble in the first days of the war. From the military base in Bahrain alone, which houses the headquarters of the 5th Fleet and can accommodate all types of ships of the American Navy, 1,500 soldiers and their families were brought to safety. And in a hurry: vehicles, personal belongings and pets had to be left behind. Even seven months later, there are only essential personnel at the base, which was the anchor of American naval power in the region for decades.

Military bases are only partially functional

In addition to the base in Bahrain, described by the Pentagon as the busiest 60 hectares of land in the world so far, Tehran also targeted American military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan and Iraq. At least 18 military personnel were killed and around 800 injured. Thousands of soldiers and family members were relocated.

The Inspector General of the American Armed Forces recently presented a damage assessment: hundreds of buildings had been damaged on the military bases in the Gulf. An F-15 fighter jet, an F-35 fighter jet, five KC-135 tanker aircraft, an E-3 aerial reconnaissance aircraft, an AH-64 attack helicopter and up to 30 MQ-9 drones were also destroyed. Separately, the State Department reported damage to foreign missions in several countries.

The military bases are only partially functional due to the damage and the withdrawal of personnel. This has direct consequences for the current war and the fragile ceasefire. The Navy, for example, is faced with a multitude of challenges. American warships trying to enforce the counter-blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz are having problems getting fuel, food for sailors and other goods.

The naval base in Bahrain has previously been used for this purpose. Now you have to move to the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean - 3,500 kilometers from the Gulf of Oman. So it happened that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was at sea for 250 days, apart from short stops in Guam and Oman. The conditions on board must have been catastrophic, which is why the aircraft carrier has now been ordered back to its home port. The Abraham Lincoln is expected in San Diego in the next few weeks.

However, the damage to the military bases affects the American armed forces not only directly in the war, but also fundamentally. There has long been a debate about whether the bases should be maintained. This week the last 2,500 American soldiers left Iraq. The American-led coalition's anti-IS mission is over. Is the eviction of the post a harbinger of what is to come elsewhere?

Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, said recently at the Fort Meade base in Maryland, referring to the Bahrain location, that the Navy will not be able to return to the base any time soon. He just wanted to be honest. General David Petraeus, the former CIA director and former commander of American troops in the Middle East, became even clearer: What is now needed is a complete rethink not only with regard to the location of military bases and regional headquarters, but fundamentally about how the military should operate in the future.

Closed bases mean loss of power

What does this mean for America's hegemony in the region? One thing is clear: reducing the military footprint of the United States, relocating soldiers or even closing bases would be accompanied by a loss of power. The overextension of American power began with George W. Bush's Iraq War. Will it come to an end under Trump's Iran war?

The shift in the coordinate system has already begun: America, the protective power, has lost trust in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia is seeking support from regional powers such as Turkey and Pakistan to defend its open flanks. And the American debates about a large-scale military withdrawal are likely to contribute to a loss of confidence among the Allies. Such a move would be a sign that Washington is abandoning its partners now that the region is in flames from the Iran war.

The relationship with Saudi Arabia, Washington's most important partner, has suffered noticeably recently. Like other Gulf leaders, Riyadh had rejected war against regional rival Iran at the time. Now there are concerns that Trump is leaving his partners out in the cold, for example by entering into a hasty deal with Tehran that ignores the security interests of the Arab Gulf states. The Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler Muhammad bin Salman currently has no interest in American pressure on Iran easing so quickly. He is said to have made this clear to Washington.

But Saudi Arabia's strongman has just received another reminder that he can only rely so much on the United States. In the escalating confrontation with the Iran-sponsored Houthi rebels, he tried in vain to persuade the president to take military action. He had a similar experience in September 2019. At the time, Trump pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” on the regime in Tehran. Iran let Arab accomplices strike against Saudi Arabia, attacking the kingdom's central oil facilities with a swarm of drones and missiles. Riyadh received minimal support from Trump.

Closing American bases would perhaps send an even more devastating message, even if they are both a blessing and a curse for the Gulf states. They were an instrument of deterrence for decades, but this became obsolete with the American-Israeli attack on Iran. Even if the Iranian shelling often targeted civilian infrastructure in states such as Saudi Arabia, the Emirates or Qatar, the American military presence at least served as a pretext for the regime in Tehran to launch missile attacks on its Arab neighbors.

The Gulf has no interest in winding down the bases

In one case, Muhammad bin Salman has already placed limits on the American military's freedom of movement: In May, he banned the use of Saudi airspace and the Prince Sultan Air Base for Operation "Project Freedom" - a mission to guide ships safely through the Strait of Hormuz. Even a phone call between Trump and the Crown Prince could not resolve the disagreement, it was said at the time.

The Gulf states may want to have more say in what the American bases are used for in the future. But the leadership in the Gulf has no interest in winding down the military bases, despite all the doubts about Trump's reliability. This was said most clearly recently by Anwar Gargash, the top diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, who is considered the mouthpiece of the foreign policy of the Emirati ruler Muhammad Bin Zayid Al Nahyan. In an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine, he said the American military presence was “essential”; Washington is even more important now than before the war.

According to Trump, the small emirate of Qatar committed itself in May 2025 to investing ten billion dollars in the expansion of the Al-Ubaid air base, the largest American base in the region. This is the central hub for air force operations. The “Combined Air Operations Center” based there says it is responsible for the command and control of air force operations in a region comprising 21 states that extends from Northeast Africa through the Middle East to Central and South Asia.

Even top Emirati diplomat Gargash, who emphasizes America's importance in the region, sees an "irony" in the fact that Washington is currently needed more, not less. As he also says, it is obvious that the United States uses its military to protect its own interests and not its regional partners. And so we can hear from several leaderships in the Gulf that in the future we should stand more on our own two feet in order to assert ourselves against Tehran.

Iran could be getting closer to its goal

However, Iran intends to fill the vacuum itself, which would result in a possible thinning of the American military presence. The regime repeatedly speaks of a new regional security architecture in which the Gulf states would be forced to come to terms with Iran and recognize its prominent position. If that were to happen, the regime would have come much closer to achieving its central goal in the conflict with the United States. For decades, his security strategy has been designed to drive the American military out of the region.

Since the American invasion of neighboring Iraq in 2003, the regime has been systematically preparing for the current confrontation. When the war began in February, Iran not only had the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East, but also underground facilities where it could protect its weapons depots from air attacks. Iran's missile production facilities are also partly underground. Tehran was apparently able to use the fragile ceasefire since April to replenish its arsenal, even though the Pentagon declared in May that it had weakened 90 percent of Iran's production capacity. Added to this is Iran's large arsenal of inexpensive drones, with which it forced America to fire its defensive missiles, which are many times more expensive.

The precision with which Iran destroyed military equipment and buildings on American bases probably owes its support to Russia and China. For example, the attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in March, which wounded 11 American soldiers and destroyed an AWACS reconnaissance aircraft. Two days earlier, according to CNN, 14 Russian reconnaissance satellites moved over the base. Tehran is said to have relied on satellite images from Chinese companies in an attack on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti air base in which three American soldiers were killed.

Moscow is also said to have provided Tehran with improved drone technology, incorporating battlefield experience from Ukraine. Iran delivered the original version of the drone to Russia in 2022 and 2023. Moscow should also help its ally with the development of supersonic cruise missiles. With such a weapon, Iran could threaten American warships even more credibly. Many of the components for Iranian drone and missile production come from China.

Iran's state media is currently happily quoting American reports about the destruction at American military bases. From Tehran's perspective, there can hardly be a better time for the revelations than just before the midterm elections. In an “open letter,” Iran’s propaganda apparatus has just addressed American voters in English. It says that Iran has not only decimated American military bases. “The greatest consequence of this war may be the damage done to America’s reputation as the world’s only superpower.”