Mike Waltz the US Envoy to the UN said:
that the US will “create alternatives to our [military] basing posture” in the Middle East by “hardening some” and possibly moving others underground. “So this leverage that Iran thinks it has now is diminishing faster and faster, literally every week as we speak,”
This is a huge admission. He tries to frame is as strength but Iran has actually made it impossible for the US to use its bases. They’re being forced to start moving underground and it’s going to cost them a ton of money. This also shows that the US has no intention of holding up its end of the MoU.
Doctrine of underground aerial supremacy
Iran actually has 1 or 2 airbases “underground”: the hangars & taxiways are situated inside mountain tunnels leading directly to a runway. There’s cool footage of their F-4s parked in them & discussion of how basing Su-35s in a couple such centrally located mountain bases would go a long way towards denying hostile overflights.
Normal targeting of an airfield usually involves hitting aircraft parking spots & the intersections between taxiways & runways–the runway itself is very easy to repair, to such an extent that munitions specifically designed to attack airfields usually also scatter mines so the enemy can’t simply drive a bulldozer up to the pothole you created & just fill it back in.