The United States will continue establishing a global missile defense system and strengthening partnership with Persian Gulf countries, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said on Thursday.

“The threat from ballistic missiles to our deployed forces, allies, and partners in the region is growing, and this threat is likely to increase in both volume and complexity in the coming years,” Ventrell said, according to RIA Novosti.

“The U.S. has a robust security partnership, including missile defense with our allies and partners in the Gulf and is committed to their security. The U.S. will continue to work with our partners in the Middle East to strengthen missile defense in the Persian Gulf,” he said.

The New York Times reported earlier on Thursday that the United States and its Arab allies are “knitting together a regional missile defense system across the Persian Gulf to protect cities, oil refineries, pipelines and military bases from an Iranian attack, according to government officials and public documents.”

Radars will be deployed in the region to increase the range of early warning coverage across the Gulf; command, control and communications systems will be introduced to exchange information with missile interceptors whose triggers are held by individual countries, the newspaper wrote.