As large-scale hostilities between the United States and Iran resume, it’s time to ask hard questions about America’s Middle East basing footprint. Seven Americans have died on U.S. military bases during the Iran war. Not on the front lines, on installations that were supposed to deter Iranian aggression and instead became its targets.

The conflict leaves Washington with an uncomfortable contradiction: U.S. forces have demonstrated extraordinary reach and precision, but the war revealed America’s regional basing footprint is more exposed, more expensive to defend, and less able to control disruption than its defenders assume.