As one of its unnegotiable demands for peace with the United States after a month of war, the Islamic Republic has demanded the eradication of American presence in the Gulf.

The radical army chiefs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, hellbent on fighting to the bitter end, have consolidated their power in the shattered regime, and are calling for the end of US hegemony in the region.

It comes as the relationship between America and its Gulf allies grows increasingly fraught, with those same allies bearing the brunt of relentless retaliatory strikes on US bases, embassies and vital energy infrastructure.

Military commentators fear a worst-case scenario where the patience of friendly Gulf nations is pushed beyond its limit – and decide US bases are far more trouble than they are worth and no longer welcome in their countries.

But, speaking to the Daily Mail, numerous experts have explained how the removal of any US presence in the region is unthinkable because it would trigger a doomsday scenario, emboldening Iran, its terrorist proxies, and providing a gift for Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

Such a move would be ‘absolutely disastrous’ for the world order, former British Army commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the Daily Mail.

‘It would be like Iran kicking the US out of the Middle East. It would be a massive PR win for Iran, for the Taliban, for ISIS, and really every jihadi terror group in the Middle East.’

Without US military bases, Washington would lose not only its capacity to deploy aircraft and soldiers in the region, but also its ability to monitor the underground activities of the Islamic State in Syria, he said, where hardline fighters still conduct guerrilla-style operations.

‘We’ve seen the impact that jihadists have had around the planet and in this country in recent years,’ de Bretton-Gordon said, highlighting how the loss of US presence in the Middle East would enable the insurgent group to reorganise following the dismantlement of the caliphate.

Smoke and flames rise at the site of airstrikes on an oil depot in Tehran on March 7

Without US military bases in the region, Washington would lose its ability to monitor the underground activities of the Islamic State in Syria, former British Army commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the Daily Mail. [Pictured: ISIS fighters on the border between Syria and Iraq in 2014]

The loss of US presence in the region would be a win for Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, experts said. [Pictured: Putin in Moscow, March 27]

‘And with greater emphasis as well, because if they’re not being hounded in the Middle East, and they’re not being hounded in Afghanistan anymore, then they will just grow and develop. It would be an absolute disaster from a counter-terror perspective.’

After four weeks of war in the Middle East, Iranian airstrikes have rendered several US bases in the Middle East almost uninhabitable, with scores of American troops forced to evacuate for safety.

Since war began on February 28, with the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran, the Islamic Republic has struck 104 American and regional bases, according to an analysis of geolocated strikes by Fabian Hinz, an open-source analyst.

As American troops are relocated to hotels and forced to prosecute the war remotely, it is clear that the operational stability of Washington’s military presence in the Middle East has been severely disrupted.

But an eradication of US power in the region would open up a vacuum within which Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would compete for control, triggering a regional war, according to Jonathan Hackett, a former US Marine interrogator and counterintelligence agent.

Amid that conflict – and the lacunae triggered by the absence of the US – the Iran-backed Houthis would seek to cement their authority in Yemen, the least governed space in the region, he said.

‘The Houthis have never really been defeated,’ he told the Daily Mail, referring back to the 9th century. ‘There’s never been an outside force that’s actually exerted sovereignty over the Houthi mountain areas. The Houthis aren’t about to give that up.’

In recent weeks, the Shia Islamist militant group has already threatened to choke off the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a 20-mile wide passage located south-west of Yemen that the rebel organisation is intent on controlling.

In the hypothetical scenario where the US was to vacate the region, the militant group – part of Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ in the Middle East – would be all the more emboldened.

Right now, if the Iranian proxies were to make their threats a reality and shutdown the busy Red Sea choke point, it would escalate global financial woes and likely push oil prices to $150 a barrel.

‘They’ve been challenged through Ottoman campaigns. There was an Egyptian campaign that was massively disastrous to Egypt in the 1970s,’ Hackett said. 

‘There’s been this crucible of people trying to take the Houthi lands, and the Houthis see this as: “We’re going to stand here and defend our land.”‘

Currently, China enables Russia and Iran by importing their sanctioned oil and selling them sophisticated dual-use technology. [Pictured: Xi Jingping in December, 2025] 

The Houthis have de facto control of Yemen, and they are an essential ally to Iran. [Pictured: Houthi soldiers with heavy machine guns mounted on vehicles on the outskirts of Sana’a, Yemen, in 2024]

A fireball rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a building in Beirut’s Bashoura neighbourhood early on March 18

The regime’s violent proxies around the world may also be invigorated. Already, a string of violence incidents across the US and Europe since the start of the war is raising concerns that Iranian sleeper cells could be increasing their activity.

Two British nationals have been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life after four Jewish charity-owned ambulances were set on fire in north London on Monday.

The incident is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime after the Hatzola ambulances were set ablaze in Golders Green in the early hours of the morning.

And within 24 hours of the first strikes in Iran, a man wearing a shirt with the colours of the Iranian flag killed three people and injured more than a dozen others at a bar in Austin, Texas.

Just a week later, two teenagers from Pennsylvania who said they were inspired by the Islamic State attempted to set off an explosive device at a protest in New York.

‘I think the Iranian perspective is to make this a slow-burning operation, rather than a big conflagration,’ Hackett said, ‘Because if it’s too big, there’ll be a lot of national assets going after them. If it’s small and sporadic, it’s a lot harder to kind of stop this on a larger scale.’

He added that the regime will want to employ a drip-feed tactic in its campaign of global violence, and avoid a kind of ‘worldwide explosion’ in terrorism, in comparison to the activities of Islamic State, which ‘gathered a lot of attention and also ultimately brought a war against ISIS’.

But over time, incidents of violence carried out by Iranian proxy networks might accumulate to a situation just as severe.

Rocket trails are seen in the sky amid a fresh barrage of Iranian missile attacks above the Israeli coastal city of Netanya on March 27

The removal of American bases in the Gulf would cause the Middle East ‘to fall apart completely into another massive conflict zone’, according to Philip Ingram, a former colonel in British military intelligence.

‘It would be seen as a huge win for Iran if that happened, and that’s why the Americans will never let it happen,’ he said.

As for whether the Russians and Chinese would step into the fray in the absence of Washington, ‘they’d like to,’ Ingram said.

‘Putin’s losing all of his support bases across the Middle East. Xi Jinping is always waiting in the wings, willing to step in. What I’m surprised at is that Xi Jinping hasn’t offered to step in and open the Straits of Hormuz, because, if he did that, he would then be seen as a potential good party, a saviour for a lot of Middle Eastern countries.

‘But he’s not doing that at the minute. Xi Jinping is very much concentrated on what he’s doing with his wider Belt and Road Initiative and what he’s doing in Southeast Asia. Putin doesn’t have the wherewithal, really, to do anything, but both of them would see it as a win. 

‘Anything that knocks America, they’d see it as a win.’

Currently, China enables Russia and Iran by importing their sanctioned oil and selling them sophisticated dual-use technology, as part of a complex network between the three countries to evade and bypass Western sanctions dubbed the ‘Axis of Evasion’ by the Atlantic Council. 

Meanwhile, recent comments by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reveal that Moscow is now supplying Tehran with Russian-made Shahed drones to use in attacks against US and Israel.

Regarding the eradication of US presence in the region, ‘Putin is no doubt telling Iran this is exactly what they should be doing,’ de Bretton-Gordon said. 

‘It might rather backfire on Putin, of course, with all those thousands of US jets not in the Middle East – they could well be redeployed against him.’

The radical army chiefs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are calling for the end of US hegemony in the region. [Pictured: IRGC fighters in Tehran, 2024] 

One of the most alarming scenarios that might unfold is the remilitarisation of Tehran to new, unforeseen depths, if the US was to exit from the Gulf. 

The Trump administration has said it aims to weaken Iran’s military by sinking its navy, destroying its missile and drone capability and ensuring that the Islamic Republic never has a nuclear weapon. 

However, after a month of conflict, Washington can only determine with certainty that it has destroyed about a third of Iran’s vast missile arsenal, according to five people familiar with the US intelligence who spoke with Reuters.

One source said part of the problem is determining how many Iranian missiles were stockpiled in underground bunkers before the war started, with estimates ranging from 2,500 by Israel’s military to around 6,000 according to some analysts.

But according to Hackett, America and Israel aren’t focusing on all of the several dangerous possibilities that may emerge from the nation’s weapon arsenal in time.

Indeed, Trump’s 15-point plan for peace – based off his Gaza ceasefire deal – only addresses limiting missiles and eradicating the country’s nuclear capability.

‘Because we are so focused on the ballistic missile programme, the nuclear programme, that would leave open pockets for drone production, or some kind of chemical weapon that’s just not even included anywhere in that agreement. 

‘And they’d be technically abiding by it, but, behind the scenes, preparing for the next round of what they see as reclaiming their standing in the region,’ he warned.

Moreover, nowhere in the prospective peace plan is a ban on the sharing of weapons and military expertise between hostile states.

‘It’s certainly a possibility, especially when we consider the close relationship between Syria and Iran from 2002 forward. Syria, of course, had a chemical weapons programme that was quite active, including in attacks they used during the Arab Spring, and there were some US strikes on these locations, but they were not completely obliterated. 

‘I, myself, have seen chlorine gas used in Syria by the Syrian government, so Iran has the technical know-how, they have partnerships. Assad and his family are not dead, they’re still around,’ Hackett said.

He added that North Korea has militarily supported Tehran in the conflict so far, including by supplying them with the Khorramshahr ballistic missile that targeted Diego Garcia, the joint US-UK military base in the Chagos Islands last week.

‘There’s this open communication of technical expertise between North Korea, Syria, and Iran that is not anywhere in these agreements, but is extremely important to note,’ he said.

For some analysts, the US has no option but to stay present and operational in the region, for the crucial reason of toppling the Islamic Republic and enacting regime change, in order to fully eradicate the nuclear threat.

‘There might be a perception of de-escalation, but at the minute, the job is only half done. I liken it to a cancer surgeon only removing part of a tumour from a patient. Leave some of the tumour inside the patient, it will grow back, and it tends to grow back even worse than it was beforehand,’ Ingram said.

‘And at the minute, with the elements of the Iranian regime that remain in place, that’s like the remnants of a cancerous tumour being left in the patient. And therefore, Donald Trump would be a very poor surgeon if he left that in there.’

‘The central tension in any managed US drawdown is that force reduction must be calibrated against the Islamic Republic’s enduring capacity to threaten freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and its broader destabilising role via proxy networks across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen,’ said Roger Macmillan, former director of Safety & Security at Iran International TV, which has been a regular target of the regime in Tehran.

‘So long as the Islamic Republic remains a theocratic state, the US and its partners must maintain sufficient deterrent posture to prevent coercion of Gulf shipping lanes and to backstop regional allies who lack independent capacity to contain Iranian asymmetric reach,’ he told the Daily Mail. 

Crucially, you can’t kill an idea, and even if Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity has been severely depleted with US-Israeli bombardment, the regime still has the technical ability, as well as the will. 

‘It’s important to remember Iran’s nuclear programme is not just at Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow, for example. They have 10 different facilities. They have one under construction on the Iran-Iraq border. They’ve got two million kilograms of uranium that has not been dug out of the ground yet in the Saghand mine,’ Hackett said.

‘They have this knowledge of how to produce centrifuges, how to process uranium, how to store uranium, how to conceal it from the public. You can’t destroy that knowledge. You can kill the people right now that know it, but you can’t get rid of it.’

The total threat Tehran poses is part of the reason all the analysts agree that the eradication of American military presence will never happen, despite the instability the war has plunged on Gulf state allies.

‘These states, at the political commentary level, may be complaining and throwing their arms up, but at the end of the day they absolutely rely on the US security umbrella against Iran,’ Hackett said.

‘And if the US left, there’s no more security umbrella, and now Iran is emboldened because they got what they wanted. Those states are absolutely at risk.’