Riyadh
The U.S. military will move its major Middle East bases out of Saudi Arabia after the Iraq war ends, military officials said this week. Since the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. has had about 5,000 troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, a figure that rose to 10,000 during the recent conflict in Iraq. More than 100 aircraft and a Combined Air Operations Center will be relocated to a base in nearby Qatar in the next few months. Osama bin Laden has frequently cited the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, home of the Islamic holy cities Mecca and Medina, as his main grievance against the United States.
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