Gulf defences fell short in Iran war, study finds

Chris Murphy questions rebuilding Gulf bases after Iran war

Gulf states will have to reconfigure their trillion-dollar defences given the damage the US-Iran war inflicted on their economies and the questionable continued value of US bases in the face of Iranian attack, according to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The report says the war exposed an “uncomfortable truth” for the Gulf states: “not only has their trillion-dollar acquisition of US weapons not translated into US protection at the crucial time, but their respective militaries are also not adequately prepared for the new kind of attritional air war to which they are being exposed.”

In the weeks before the 8 April ceasefire, 12 regional states, overwhelmingly in the Gulf, faced 4,670 Iranian one-way attack drones and more than 1,400 ballistic missiles, the report found. Nearly half were aimed at the United Arab Emirates. Although the vast majority were repelled, one estimate of the damage to energy infrastructure cited by the report is put as high as $58bn (£43bn).

A fire near Dubai international airport in March, after a “drone-related incident,” set a fuel tank alight, and flights were suspended at the airport after the attack.

Despite huge investment in mainly US armaments, the report identified significant shortcomings: “overwhelming reliance on US-supplied air- and missile-defence systems and munitions; a failure to achieve regional defence integration; a shortage of minesweeping capability; limited retaliatory options; and the prohibitive costs stemming from an overdependence on expensive, high-end systems to take down relatively inexpensive drones and missiles.”

The study is neutral on whether the divided Gulf states should seek a new non-aggression pact with Iran, but it says the war has shown that longstanding defence and security partnerships with the US “have failed to ensure adequate protection against Iranian aggression.” It adds: “If anything, US military bases and defence partnerships with the US have provided Iran with another pretext for attacks against the Gulf states.”

Public opinion on the US in the Gulf has shifted, the report says, “from security provider to strategic liability.” Iran would portray either a reduction or a complete withdrawal of US forces from the region as “a strategic success and vindication of its steadfastness,” the report notes, and would use it to embarrass the Gulf states about their “decades-long courtship of US protection.”

The study comes after Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said a debate was under way in the US military about the value of seeking to rebuild the damaged US bases in the Gulf. Murphy said the Gulf state leadership “want us to rebuild” and “to keep a presence in the region,” but questioned the value of installations that could be destroyed quickly: “What good is it to have a base in the region to protect American interests if within 24 hours of a hot war starting, it is wiped off the map?”

“We would be criminally incompetent as stewards of taxpayer dollars if we were to rebuild bases that are blown up within hours of the next war starting,” Murphy said. He said the US will have to operate with a smaller footprint in the region. “The limiting principle on the footprint that we rebuild will be ‘what can we protect?’,” he said, “because we clearly cannot protect the scope of our footprint today and if we can’t protect it, it is useless.” At the very least, Murphy suggested, the US may need to relocate its bases in the eastern Mediterranean further away from Iranian missiles.