The USA has already passed the point of imperial overstretch and is now in the phase of imperial collapse, even without a proper Sicilian Expedition.
The damage to that HQ and other bases was so extensive that the US is apparently considering moving some of them “further west” rather than rebuilding them:
The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations. Structures that were attacked may not be rebuilt. Command and control nodes could be moved underground. And military capabilities could become more spread out across the region, the officials said, though they cautioned that no decisions had been made.
They write that the CSIS estimated the damage to the bases could be as high as an eye-watering $5 billion dollars:
Pentagon comptroller Jay Hurst told Congress last month that the department’s estimated cost of the war, then at $29 billion, didn’t include damage to U.S. bases. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in a report published Tuesday that the total cost of the war was about $40 billion. That estimate included their calculus of $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion in damage to U.S. bases, based on structures that CSIS identified as damaged.
The US has long been lax, never expecting anyone to dare strike its bases directly, probably as the Romans didn’t expect Odoacer to sack the throne in their final terminally ill period. Or maybe they just didn’t care anymore. The US had coasted on its aura of “invincibility” for so long that its core had been hollowed out; by the time Iran struck, the once “feared” US was a shell of its former self, and its bases were vaporized with little effort.
This is the equivalent of the Roman Empire retreating from the British Isles. It’s not the sort of thing from which an empire is going to recover, it’s the sort of historic event that marks a fundamental transformation.
The world now knows that the US military is incapable of enforcing the will of whatever foreign entity it is that rules in Washington DC, and that the imperial government there does not represent the interests nor have the support of the American people. It still has its money printing capabilities and its mercenaries, but decades of the military-financial complex have drained its once-formidable legions and rendered them incapable of large scale, attritional warfare.
This is the customary fate of empires. Once the foreigners begin taking charge, the collapse is inevitable.