The command was established on 1 January 1983. As its name implies, CENTCOM covers the "central" area of the globe located between then European and Pacific Commands (PACOM). (Changes since 1983 have seen the creation of Africa Command and change of title for PACOM to Indo-Pacific Command.) When the
hostage crisis in Iran and the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan underlined the need to strengthen the U.S. presence in the region, President
Jimmy Carter established the
Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) in March 1980. Steps were taken to transform the RDJTF into a permanent unified command over a two-year period. The first step was to make the RDJTF independent of
U.S. Readiness Command, followed by the activation of CENTCOM in January 1983. The command was configured to fight both the Soviets if necessary, and assure other U.S. interests in the area. In 1980,
Saddam Hussein of
Iraq invaded Iran, beginning the
Iran–Iraq War. The war risked interruptions to the oil supply route out of the
Persian Gulf/Arabian Gulf through the
Strait of Hormuz. Developments like Iranian mining operations in the Gulf led to CENTCOM's first combat operations. On 17 May 1987, , conducting operations in the Persian Gulf,
was struck by Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi aircraft, resulting in 37 casualties. Soon afterward, as part of what became known as the "
Tanker War", the
Federal government of the United States reflagged and renamed 11
Kuwaiti oil tankers. In
Operation Earnest Will, these tankers were escorted by USCENTCOM's
Middle East Force through the Persian Gulf to Kuwait and back through the
Strait of Hormuz. By late 1988, the regional strategy still largely focused on the potential threat of a massive
Soviet invasion of Iran.
Exercise Internal Look has been one of CENTCOM's primary planning events. It had frequently been used to train CENTCOM to be ready to defend the
Zagros Mountains from a Soviet attack and was held annually. In autumn 1989, the main CENTCOM contingency plan, OPLAN 1002-88, assumed a Soviet attack through Iran to the Persian Gulf. The plan called for five-and-two-thirds US divisions to deploy, mostly light and heavy forces at something less than full strength (apportioned to it by the Joint Strategic Capability Plan [JSCAP]). The original plan called for these five-and-two-thirds divisions to march from the Persian Gulf to the
Zagros Mountains and prevent the
Soviet Ground Forces (army) from seizing the
Iranian oil fields. After 1990, General
Norman Schwarzkopf reoriented CENTCOM's planning to fend off a threat from Iraq, and Internal Look moved to a biennial schedule. There was a notable similarity between the 1990 Internal Look exercise scripts and the real-world movement of Iraqi forces which culminated in Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait during the final days of the exercise. Following the defeat of both the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (9 November 2001) and Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq (8 April 2003), CENTCOM remained controlling the U.S. forces deployed there. U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in 2010 (but returned years later); and were withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2021. Beginning in October 2002, CENTCOM conducted operations in the
Horn of Africa.
Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa was established to carry these activities out. These operations involved a series of
Special Operations Forces raids, humanitarian assistance, consequence management, and a variety of civic action programs. The command has also remained poised to provide disaster relief throughout the region; its most recent significant relief operations have been a response to the October 2005 earthquake in
Pakistan, and the large-scale evacuation of American citizens from
Lebanon in 2006. ,
Syria, May 2017 On 1 October 2008, the Department of War transferred responsibility for
Sudan,
Eritrea,
Ethiopia,
Djibouti, Kenya, and Somalia to the newly established Africa Command.
Egypt, home to
Exercise Bright Star, the Department of War's largest reoccurring military exercise, remained in the CENTCOM
Area of Responsibility. On 15 January 2021, responsibility for
Israel was transferred from Europe Command to CENTCOM. In January 2015, CENTCOM's Twitter feed was reported to have been hacked on 11 January by
ISIS sympathizers. This situation lasted for less than one hour; no classified information was posted and "none of the information posted came from CENTCOM's server or social media sites"; however, some of the slides came from the federally funded
Lincoln Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In January 2018,
Turkey urged the United States to remove its troops from
Syrian city of
Manbij, saying that otherwise they might come under attack from Turkish troops; however, former CENTCOM commander
Joseph Votel confirmed an American commitment to keeping troops in Manbij. In 2019, the Iranian government designated Central Command a terrorist organization after the
Trump administration branded Iran's
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with the same label. On 28 February 2026, CENTCOM led
Operation Epic Fury, a large-scale joint US-Israeli military operation against Iran. In a statement, CENTCOM said that US and Israeli forces had begun striking targets to "dismantle the Iranian regime's security apparatus, prioritising locations that posed an imminent threat," including
IRGC command-and-control facilities, air defense capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields. The command stated the operation involved "the largest regional concentration of American military firepower in a generation" and that it involved troops from all six branches of the US armed forces. CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper confirmed that US forces had "successfully defended against hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks" and that there were no US casualties. Initial operations included air, land and sea-launched precision munitions, along with the first employment of US-made one-way attack drones. ==Structure==