The two month-old war between Israel and Hamas has unleashed a torrent of difficult questions. Can Israel destroy Hamas in its entirety? If so, who will take over Gaza? Will Israel and the Palestinian Authority get back to peace talks after the war ends?
While all of these questions are important, the most important is getting buried: Does the United States have the correct force posture in the Middle East? While conventional wisdom suggests a bigger U.S. presence is required due to the gravity of the moment, the opposite is actually the case.
Since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7, the Biden administration has surged approximately 17,000 additional U.S. military personnel into the Middle East, including two carrier strike groups, a Marine Expeditionary Unit and several more fighter jet squadrons. In total, about 45,000 U.S. troops are in the region today, the vast majority stationed on large bases in the Persian Gulf. The build-up since early October is designed partly as a force-protection measure as well as an attempt to deter Iran and its various proxy militias, particularly Hezbollah, from intervening directly in the war.
The strategy appears to have worked well enough to keep the conflict contained to Gaza. Although clashes between Israeli and Hezbollah forces are alarming, they have been confined to within four to five miles of their shared border. Iran has never been particularly interested in intervening, knowing full well that its military is no match for Israel and the United States.
But it would be a grave error to let complacency set in. Washington is playing a dangerous game in the Middle East, a region where the U.S. has very limited interests at stake: defending itself against transnational terrorism, preventing a single state from dominating the region, and preventing major disruptions to the world's oil supply. Everything else, from pushing for a democratic transition in Syria to turning the Iraqi army into a professional fighting force that meets U.S. standards, is immaterial and exposes U.S. troops to unneeded danger.
As any U.S. official will tell you, degrading and disrupting terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) remains a U.S. priority. Fortunately, this goal doesn't require permanent ground troops. The U.S. is fortunate to possess the most sophisticated counterterrorism apparatus in the world, complete with the surveillance technology and strike platforms that can neutralize terrorists regardless of where they operate. In August 2022, the U.S. was able to track, surveil, and kill Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a precision drone strike in Afghanistan despite having withdrawn its troops from the country a year earlier. In January 2023, U.S. special operations forces killed Bilal al-Sudani, a senior Islamic State fundraiser, in a remote cave in northern Somalia after extensive monitoring over a matter of months.
In Iraq and Syria, where a combined 3,400 U.S. troops are deployed, ISIS is a shell of its former self. In 2014, the group was a proto-state flush with hundreds of millions of dollars, ruling 8 million people in a swath of territory the size of the United Kingdom. The so-called caliphate, however, has long since been in the history books. Today, ISIS is a low-grade rural insurgency. Numerous leaders have been killed; the last one, Abu al-Hussein al-Qurayshi, only lasted months on the job. ISIS' top priority is breaking fighters out of prison, a sign of utter desperation. If U.S. officials are worried about the terrorist group resurging after a U.S. withdrawal, they shouldn't be—the Iraqi government, Syrian government, Iran, Iranian-backed militias, Russia, Turkey and the Kurds all have a vested interest in preventing it.
What about deterring Iran from running roughshod over the Middle East? While Iran's proxy network is formidable, its conventional military strength is sub-par, with an untested army, a small navy, and an air force still relying on planes from the 1960s. Hemmed in by economic sanctions, the Iranians couldn't dominate the Middle East even if they wanted to. The regional balance of power is stable, and a U.S. withdrawal is highly unlikely to change it. Even if Iran did gain some advantage, rivals like Saudi Arabia and Israel wouldn't be passive spectators.
What about safeguarding the world's oil supply? This is obviously a concern for the U.S., as it is for all countries. But there is little evidence that a bulky U.S. presence in the Middle East does anything to keep the taps on. What matters far more is the individual decisions of oil producers, all of which are highly dependent on oil proceeds to resource their budgets. Cutting oil supply as a form of extortion ultimately hurts the extortionist.
In short, the U.S. can afford to pare down deployments in the Middle East without worrying much about the consequences to its power and influence. The U.S. could start the process by drawing down the U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Syria, where the costs of keeping them there—regular militia attacks, endless military training missions, and the ever-constant risk of escalation—far outweigh whatever perceived benefits there may be.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
