What Is Al Udeid Air Base? The US Base in Qatar Iran Keeps Targeting

Al Udeid sits in the desert southwest of Doha, the capital of Qatar, roughly halfway between the city and the Saudi border. Its main runway is about 3,750 meters long (around 12,300 feet), long enough for heavy tankers, bombers and transport aircraft at full load.

The base belongs to Qatar. The Qatar Emiri Air Force flies from it, and the United States, Britain and other partners operate there under agreements with Doha. Qatar built Al Udeid in 1996 at a cost reported at more than $1 billion. American forces began using the base in 2001, in the first weeks of the war in Afghanistan, and it has grown with every US campaign in the region since.

Al Udeid is where the US military runs its Middle East operations from. It is the forward headquarters of US Central Command and of its air component, US Air Forces Central, and it houses the Combined Air Operations Center, the facility that plans and directs coalition air operations from Egypt to Central Asia.

The main US flying unit is the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, best known for its KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft, which keep fighters and bombers in the air over long distances. Bombers, surveillance aircraft and transport planes have rotated through as campaigns demanded.

The air operations center moved to Al Udeid in 2003 from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, after Saudi Arabia grew uneasy with the large American presence on its soil. Officers from 17 nations work inside it. On January 12, 2026, Central Command opened a new air and missile defense cell there with Gulf partners, built to share warnings and coordinate interceptions across the region.

No other US site in the region combines a runway of that length, room for about 10,000 troops and the command centers that run the air war. In practice, most US air operations against the Islamic State, in Afghanistan and over the Gulf have been commanded from this one base in Qatar.

Washington has committed to the base for the long term. A 10-year defense cooperation agreement signed in 2013 governs the US presence, and US defense officials said in January 2024 that it had been quietly extended for another decade. On May 15, 2025, Trump addressed troops at the base and said Qatar would invest $10 billion in it in the coming years, on top of the billions Qatar has already spent upgrading it.

For Qatar the bargain runs both ways. Hosting the base gives a small state with a powerful neighbor across the water a direct security link to Washington. It has also made Qatar a mediator with Iran, a role it is playing again in the current Iran-US talks.

Yes, at least twice. The first attack came on the evening of June 23, 2025, a day after US bombers struck Iran’s nuclear sites. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at the base and claimed six hits. Qatar’s defense ministry said the missiles were intercepted and that nobody was hurt. On July 11, 2025, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said one Iranian ballistic missile had in fact hit Al Udeid while US and Qatari air defenses intercepted the rest, damaging a geodesic dome that housed communications equipment. He called the damage minimal and said the base remained fully operational.

The base was warned before the second attack. On January 14, 2026, Qatar’s International Media Office confirmed that some personnel were being moved out of Al Udeid because of “the current regional tensions.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “a massive effort was undertaken before this conflict to move as many humans off of targets to other places.”

The war began on February 28, 2026, and Iran aimed at US bases across the Gulf from its first days. On March 2, Qatar’s defense ministry said Qatari F-15 fighters had shot down two Iranian Su-24 bombers. On March 3, the ministry said Iran had fired two ballistic missiles at Al Udeid: one was intercepted and one struck the base, with no casualties. Neither Qatar nor the Pentagon has published a full account of the damage.

Yes. The base still hosts US forces, but the Pentagon is keeping visitors and damage details away. On October 6, 2026, Senator Chris Murphy said he had been denied access to Al Udeid during a congressional trip to the Gulf and called the refusal a cover-up of war damage. The Pentagon said his office had been told before the trip that he would not get its support to visit, in line with the defense secretary’s directive restricting travel in the region.

Qatar says it is investing in the base, not stepping back from it. On October 19, 2026, Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s deputy prime minister and minister of state for defense affairs, told a security forum in Doha that Qatar is continuing to develop Al Udeid, which hosts US forces and personnel from other partner countries.

The base’s future now depends on the war around it. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, and Qatar’s gas exports have already paid a price, as our report on the Qatar LNG crisis shows.