What is Al Udeid: the importance of Qatar base to US military

Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar is the biggest US military facility in the Middle East, with links to Donald Trump.

The Al Udeid US military air base, south of Doha, Qatar. The overnight attack on the largest US military base in the region, hosted in the Gulf state, has been called a ‘flagrant violation’ of Qatar’s sovereignty'. Picture: AFP

Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar is the biggest US military facility in the Middle East.

It was attacked by Iran in retaliation over US strikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities on Sunday.

Gas-rich Qatar lies 190 kilometres south of Iran across the Gulf. Al Udeid, a 60-acre base located about 30 kilometres southwest of the capital Doha, hosts the regional headquarters of the Pentagon’s Central Command.

LIVE: Follow our rolling overage of the attack here

It also houses the US Air Force and Great Britain’s Royal Air Force, as well as the Qatar Emiri Air Force.

The base was built in 1996 and was used by the US to launch military operations in Afghanistan from 2001.

Donald Trump’s ties to Al Udeid

US President Donald Trump arrives to address troops at the Al-Udeid air base southwest of Doha on May 15, 2025.

Qatar has spent $8 billion in developing the base, once considered so sensitive that American military officers would say only that it was somewhere “in southwest Asia.” Trump has visited Al UdeidTrump visited the air base during a trip to the region last month.

It was the first time a sitting US president had travelled to the installation in more than 20 years.

An estimated 40,000 US military personnel are stationed in the Middle East.

Many of them are on ships at sea as part of a bolstering of forces as the conflict escalated between Israel and Iran, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations research and policy centre.

Key military aircraft kept at Al Udeid

Military aircraft — including transport planes like the Hercules C-130 and and reconnaissance aircraft — are kept at Al Udeid. About 40 were parked on the tarmac at the base on June 5, Associated Press reports, but in an image taken on June 19, only three aircraft were visible.

Neighbouring Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet. After Tuesday’s attack, the American embassy announced it had “temporarily shifted a portion of its employees to local telework”.

“We affirm that the State of Qatar reserves the right to respond directly in a manner proportional to the nature and scale of this blatant aggression,” Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said in a statement.

This combination photo shows military planes at the US military base of Al Udeid in Qatar on June 5, left, and a photo taken on June 19, 2025, right, showing no more planes on the tarmac.

Air traffic was suspended over Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Qatar’s Defence Ministry said there were no deaths or injuries.

The US has military sites spread across the region, including in Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates.

Key facts about Al Udeid

- Al Udeid hosts thousands of US service members

- The sprawling facility hosts thousands of US service members and served as a major staging ground for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the height of both, Al Udeid housed some 10,000 US troops, and that number dropped to about 8,000 as of 2022.

- The forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command, Al Udeid is built on a flat stretch of desert.

- Al Udeid cleared its tarmacs last week, ahead of the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities,. Al Udeid saw many of the transport planes, fighter jets and drones typically on its tarmac dispersed. In a June 18 satellite photo taken by Planet Labs PBC and analysed by The Associated Press, the air base’s tarmac had emptied.

- The US military has not acknowledged the change, which came after ships off the US Navy’s 5th Fleet base in Bahrain also had dispersed. That’s typically a military strategy to ensure your fighting ships and planes aren’t destroyed in case of an attack.

- With AP