Its taken from a Pentagon Intelligence Forum. People who run the United States.
In any naval conflict with Iran, whether of a defense or offensive nature will require the capture of several Iranian held islands in the middle of the waterway in the Gulf of Hormuz.
The islands, Siri, Abu Musa and the Tunb group "are arsenals on the deep water channel in and out of the Gulf, they will require Marines to secure in a war against Iran". The Tunbs, incidentally, are claimed by the UAE. Wikipedia writes:
In 1971, shortly before the end of the British protectorate and the formation of the UAE,
Iran seized semi-control of Abu Musa under an agreement of joint administration together with Sharjah, with both sides nominally upholding their separate claims. A day later, on
30 November 1971, Iran forcibly seized control of the Tunb Islands, against the resistance of the tiny Arab police force stationed there. The Iranians were instructed not to open fire, and the first(and according to some sources only) shots came from the Arab resistance which killed 4 Iranian marines and injured one. According to some sources, the Arab civilian population of Greater Tunb was then deported, but according to others the island had already been uninhabited for some time earlier.
In the following decades, the issue remained a source of friction between the Arab states and Iran. The Gulf Co-operation Council of Arab litoral states repeatedly declared support for the UAE claims. Bilateral talks between the UAE and Iran in 1992 failed. The UAE have attempted to bring the dispute before the International Court of Justice, but Iran refuses to do so. Tehran says the islands always belonged to it as it had never renounced possession of the islands, and that they are an integral part of Iranian territory. The UAE argue that the islands were under the control of
Qasimi sheikhs throughout the 19th century, whose rights were then inherited by the UAE after 1971. Iran counters by stating that the local Qasimi rulers during a crucial part of the 19th century where
actually based on the Iranian, not the Arab, coast, and had thus become Persian subjects. The maritime importance of Iran's island positions can easily be seen showing the island's position in relation to the sealanes.
Logically any naval confrontation with Iran would imply an amphibious operation to taking out these islands .
USMarines training to take these islands have been sent a month ahead of schedule and they left last month to be on station by June. I took a look-see on Google Maps. Looks like there's a wall all the way around the island, as though it were fortified. Marines might have a tough time.
helicopter assaults are going to be necessary after a classic bombardment and breaching. They're not only positioning big boats strategically, but the drip-drip-drip of daily reports of the perfidy and dangerousness of Iran is also increasing. Interesting to see them listed in the article like that.
I would have thought the strike would come in November rather than in the summer, though..
Expect that if this comes to pass,
Marines will also be in Bandar Abbas. First MARDIV USMC unit wargamed taking it in 1981. Can you IMAGINE how crazy the mullahs would get with Marines there? Talk about flypaper. They'd send everything they had after them. A target-rich environment for the carrier attack wings.
I met a Canadian fellow (who lives here in the U.S.) who told me that he knows the father of someone in the Navy Seals. According to him,
the Seals in the Gulf are already equipped to use tactical, easily-portable nukes. I don't know how true this is, but it does make some sense if they are training to carry out demolition operations against Iranian naval facilities. If we go in we will be all out from the gitgo. We will be prepared for anything and prepared to escalate accordingly.
I don't think there's going to be an offensive military operation against Iran. However, that doesn't mean there aren't contingency defensive scenarios.
One could imagine a situation where Iran threatens to block the Straits, using mines, the threat of missiles, etc. at a politically opportune time.
Even if Iran doesn't have the capability to do this, one or two threatening attacks would be enough to send insurance rates sky-high and push oil into the $200 a barrel range.
Recall the speedboat incident. Now imagine the
speedboats were used to intimidate a slow, lumbering tanker and not a 35-knot destroyer with enough defensive armament to boggle the mind. That would be something to respond to.
But the defensive contingency makes more sense than any idea there is going to be an amphibious invasion of Iran.
The first step in a battle is to take out the enemies command and control (C&C) network.
Didn't
ex-UN Ambassador John Bolton recently say we need to attack QODS camps in Iran where Iraqi jihadis are being trained? Wars and rumors of wars. Iran has its nasty little fingers in many evil pies and the chickens are coming home to roost..
My guess is Iran wants war.
They've been using the Alexander Strategy, where he marched his Army to the river in India every day at noon for a fortnight, then on the fifteenth day, attacked.
The speedboat strategy in wargames sunk an entire Carrier Task force. Darting speedboats that went right up to the line of aggression kept the US forces on edge, losing focus, for several days and then suddenly attacked in a swarm, overwhelming tactical ability to handle them. The Iranians were wiped out but so was the Carrier Task force (nearly all sunk in minutes with the help of shore-based missiles).
I imagine that the experience of the past 30 years (US appeasement in the face of Acts of War by Iran, including the Embassy hostages, Beirut Embassy and Barracks bombings, Khobar Towers, etc) has led Iran's leaders to believe that
if they did sink a Carrier Group the US would be forced to exit the Gulf and cede it to Iran, allowing it have Oil at $300 a barrel. Obama's unconditional need to hug Ahmadinejad and his coronation by the US media also has them thinking it would be very easy and wise to attack.
Certainly Ahmadinejad has done everything in his power to provoke and attack US forces including killing our guys in Iraq and Afghanistan with impunity. Using actual Qods Force Iranian soldiers to do it, too.
Very likely the Iranians could sink a Carrier at least, and probably most of a task force. It would cost them, but they could do it.
What would Dems do? Offer an immediate surrender I think. They've got nothing else. THE DOINKS WONT FIGHT. THEY WILL FOLD LIKE QUEERS.
We currently occupy nations located along long stretches of Iran's eastern and western borders. We have unlimited access to multiple airfields in the region and can launch cruise missile strikes from nearly any direction toward Iran. We operate extremely long range weapons systems whose specific role is to stealthily penetrate enemy air defense systems and take out well protected strategic targets. None of those systems currently operate off the deck of a carrier.
If we decide to strike Iran, we will be successful. However, that strike won’t originate from Carrier Battle Groups operating in the Persian Gulf. A Carrier group might also be "bait" in that one might sail through the Straits, and Iran might (or might not) attack it. They'd probably be able to sink the Carrier group if they wanted to. Not without cost, but it has been wargamed (by the US).
What the US needs is a "bloody shirt" incident to get us all homicidal.
Readers who were born before 1975 or so will recall that during its 8-year war with Iraq, the Iranian revolutionary regime made military attacks on international oil shipping in the Persian Gulf. One response by the U.S. was to allow non-U.S.-flagged ships protection under U.S. Naval convoy protection.
A look at Google Earth shows that the Island of Abu Musa, which is smack in the middle of the gulf, just west of the Tangeh-ye Hormoz, the narrow passage between Iran's
Qushm Island and the northernmost tip of Dubai's jutting peninsula.
The Island's 12 square kilometers are sufficient to support a landing strip close to 1000 meters in length, hangars, fuel storage, warehouses, and various structures all over the island. Iran has long based various sorts of anti-ship missile batteries along this island's coasts, and you can see earth-covered bunkers --- presumably for weapons storage --- revetments for anti-aircraft batteries, and all sorts of squarish pill-box-sorts of structures placed adjacent to beaches, some arranged apparently for optimal fields of fire. There seem also to be extended sections of light fencing, and observation towers & posts.
A central hill, Jabal Halwa, possibly 70 - 80 meters has numerous entrances to dug-outs at its base. A Jetty, and protected anchorage suitable for small vessels sits on the western end of the island, near one end of the runway. The Google photograph shows a gaggle of dingies, nine or ten vessels under 5 meters, one 7 or 8 meters in length. There's room for lots more. What I find most intriguing is the patches of little neighborhoods, looking just like the housing for military families . Looks like there are homes for several hundred in single-family or duplex structures. Not many vehicles visible, just enough to confirm that many of the asphalt roads are wide enough for two-way traffic, which by itself implies substantially more traffic than would be served by a single lane road. I wonder if there's a desalinization plant.
"Lessr Tunb" A smaller island to the North and closer to Iran's southern coast, and Sirri Island each have runways. It's hard to imagine that Iran would be able to effectively defend them, but the Japanese defenders of the Pacific Islands showed that's a dangerous speculation.
Iran has bought a number of Russian submarines, and some new Italian-made subs, all conventionally powered, but some described as "super-quiet." They could be troublesome. The big question in my mind is whether our military have the freedom and wit to defend themselves, or are they hobbled by absurd rules of engagement that essentially mean the first serious Iranian attack will be a sacrifice useful mainly for enraging the U.S. population enough to finally respond to decades of provocation.
I suspect a strategy would be first to deny the use of those Islands to Iran by smashing them, then possibly use them as un-sinkable "carriers" since they are already clearly useful as airfields.
any carrier group is going to be unjustifiably vulnerable hemmed in by the washtub sized Persian Gulf. OUR CARRIER TASK FORCES CAN EASILY STAY OUT OF RANGE OF IRAN'S CAPABILITES.
But U.S. surface ships will have to be placed in harm's way to defend international shipping as long as the crazy Mullahs are ready to lob missiles at the tankers.
I wonder what the Iranian's learned from their defeat during the mostly forgotten 1988 Tanker war with us.
I think Iran had a region wide terror offensive planned for this summer. Together with Syria there would be a grab for control in Lebanon and a "terror" war with Israel on three fronts. Iraq would see a general uprising by the Shiite. Terror attacks on the low seas of the Persian gulf. Terror attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They may not have any more resources than the Taliban have displayed, however,. And the Taliban are running scared. But central to the strategy was an uprising in Iraq. But the uprising came early and against Iran by the Shiite (and everyone else) in Iraq. Ditto Lebanon, where even the Shiite may dislike Iran/Syrian meddling.
The Iranian terror gun is misfiring. Can we force it to Jam? We are apparently gathering the forces to jam it, if need be. You blow up the region. We blow up Iran.
I wonder what the Iranian's learned from their defeat during the mostly forgotten 1988 Tanker war with us.
That an AEGIS cruiser can take down a commercial jet airplane much faster than four guys with boxcutters? I would think that a amphibious invasion of these islands would resemble the invasions of Pantelleria in 1943 or mainland Japan in 1945. You drive up there in a ship and step off, being extra careful to not trip over your rifle - or perhaps take the steps required to avoid getting bitten by a mule.
If there ever was a target for multiple MOABs(An ancient kingdom east of the Dead Sea in present-day southwest Jordan. According to the Bible, its inhabitants were descendants of Lot. Archaeological exploration has traced settlement in the area to at least the 13th century B.C.), this be it. the Marines could schedule a multiple MOAB for each of the islands. It isnt nuclear but it does the same damn thing. The islands have NO defenses against MOABs
Restoring a few small islands to UAE could not be considered an invasion of Iran. And if the UAE was so grateful that it allowed US forces to defend the islands for it, well, that is only to be expected.
Iran declared war on the US in 1979, and has re-declared war constantly ever since.
Perhaps it is time for the US to pick away more deeply at Iran's periphery, where it hurts.
Black Ops could be arranged in Iranian cities in crowded Mosques at Friday Nite rush hour. The last thing we would do is initiate an attack on Iran with major carriers in the Gulf. They'd have to run the gauntlet of the Strait of Hormuz . never happen
Carrier Battle Groups will be operated in the Arabian Sea, under their own CAG umbrella and under the B-52 and B-1 CAP that operates out of Diego Garcia. The only issue will be for the jeep carriers and the MEF's that have to go in and get all Peilelu on those islands.
They will, in all probability, be heavily defended by garrison troops armed with standoff missiles. A tough nut for any amphibious force. But MOABs could do the trick handily. The island are not that big.
I think intent is difficult to gauge and if the carrier fleet sails in mass, it would be after war broke out. I would not expect to see anything other than the usual rotations of naval forces prior to hostilities against Iran. Warning moves will be staged and hidden for the most part.
The US will operate in the Gulf during a war should it occur though, dangerous or not. Most likely not with carrier forces, but indeed surface forces will be required to keep sea lines of communication open for commercial traffic, and if the US brings disruption there, the adage 'you break it, you fix it' applies. We can think back to the USS Vincennes incident and mock, but in a shooting war in those waters, the
AEGIS system on US Naval forces means life or death for many mariners. The conversation did not address ABOT and KAAOT, the most difficult defense challenge in the region during hostilities. Against land based, truck mounted, short range
sub sonic missiles like the C701s, warships protecting the Iraqi oil terminals have 35 seconds to react. The problem is even without remote guidance systems, the built in radar homing systems will find the big targets, which are either tankers or terminals. Very dangerous.
The buildup of carrier groups near Iran and in the eastern Med has been happening gradually for 2-3 years. I don't see any real increase in belligerent statements from either the US or Iran.
I don't believe that an unpopular Pres Bush has the political strength to carry out a blue-sky attack against Iran. In order for that to happen we'd need a run up similar to the run up to the attack on Iraq (public statements, speeches to Congress and the UN, etc.). Not only haven't we seen anything like that but there isn't time for such a thing before the elections.
I don't believe that either side wants a war any time soon for different reasons. The Iranians would take a huge beating, possibly up to and including the removal from power of the rulers. I'm sure it hasn't escaped their notice that Saddam is six feet under and was hung by Iraqi citizens. Mullah Omar isn't doing too well either.
The Iranians have always confronted the US with proxies and deniable actions. We can debate whether they've succeeded in Iraq but they have managed to fight the US without an attack on their homeland. I'm sure they consider that a good thing. Also, why would they start a war before they HAVE the bomb?
For Bush an unprovoked attack on Iran would likely have bad consequences for the election. It would put McCain in a very difficult position. An unprovoked attack on Iran would be unpopular. Would McCain be for it or against it? If for it he takes an unpopular position. If against it he would go against the right-wing of his party. It's lose-lose for McCain and I assume that Bush wants McCain to win.
The only thing that would change this would be a major provocation from Iran. Who shoots first is very important in US domestic opinion as well as world opinion. The Iranians could be hoping for some kind of October surprise that would embarrass the US, perhaps skewing the election in their favor (whatever they think in their favor means), or perhaps accelerating a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. I think that their objective would be to humiliate the US, not to start a shooting war. However, any kind of
brinksmanship COULD lead to a shooting war. Of course if the Iranians think that Bush's hands are tied they may become more belligerent.
One can imaging a Gulf of Tonkin event scripted by the white house but I doubt that Bush is capable of this. I heard on the radio yesterday that there is an exodus of white house personnel already starting. It isn't the right time to be running international intrigues when the best and brightest are heading to those high-paying jobs in the private sector.
The ME would be further along given time if the present Iranian leaders were eliminated.
I have yet to think of what scenerio is possible that would allow time for cooler heads to prevail. A scenerio that would avert military confrontation.
Life events can often and quickly influence and change long held beliefs. But I suspect that only happens in Hollywood.
I do not think that Iran wishes to engage us in a military struggle, but it may be all that is left.
Recent history demostrates the we/
Americans will not tolerate nor have the stomach for long-drawn out wars,
So in the end, it will take thousands if not millions of civilians casualties before we finished them. It would no be pretty.
Nothing that I see in the horizon at this moment gives me any hope of a peaceful solution.
So as other have said, why wait and face larger casualties and environmental long term death.
I wouldn't expect any carriers to try to transit the Strait of Hormuz during a battle. Destroyers and cruisers, maybe, but you would think if the US was planning a first-strike there would be elements already in the Gulf and some outside.
The Marines have the MV-22 in-theater (operational in Iraq), and IIRC the only benefit of dug-in fortifications at this point in history is to give the mission planners for the B-52s and B-1s a checklist for delivery of one-ton JDAMs. A few of those and whole islands could disappear.
The easiest way to trigger a fight if a trigger was sought would be for the UAE to get shot at and then ask for US "help". The US starts with the islands closest to the UAE, then sends a ship or two into the Strait. If we get shot at, particularly from Iran, then it's plausibly "defensive" to take out every air-defense and sea-defense capability the Iranians have around the Strait of Hormuz. Bingo.They started it.
The US would bomb things in Iraq during Northern Watch and Southern Watch, without a declaration from Congress. That was considered "defensive", this would likely be a lot more than that but I would doubt the Congress could object to the US Navy defending itself from attack. At least, not effectively and within the 48-72 hours that would be needed to wreck equipment and put the Iranian defensive plans back a decade or three.
I do not believe the US has anything to gain in a unilateral strike on Iran. As has been stated by others,
Persian nationalism is a potent force and welding that to the mullahs seems to be a bad idea. We will be well into the losing side of any exchange the second a US or Israeli bomb comes off a rack over Iran. In an extreme situation, why not just EMP the place? Uranium centrifuges don't spin without power, and it would seem to be somewhat easier to block them getting replacement electronics and power transformers than to bunker-bust Natanz.
EMPS would be ideal over Natanz. They dont kill civilians and they cut power to everything.. Apparently they use carbon filaments now, it's the
CBU-94/BLU-114/B:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-114.htm
I wonder how many Arc Light strikes it would take before those Island garrisons are toast, and a company of Girl Scouts could take those islands.
"I wonder what the Iranian's learned from their defeat during the mostly forgotten 1988 Tanker war with us."
1. Construct a mixed bag of fixed and mobile anti-ship missiles scattered across every scrap of coastline and island within Iranian control. At the same time, buy or manufacture and then stage thousands of mines the same way.
The Iranians know that U.S. air power and standoff weaponry can make short work of their fixed military forces and infrastructure. But they have been building
hardened coastline ASM sites literally non-stop since the seventies. They don't need to sink U.S. surface elements, even though they'd like to. It is sufficient for their purpose they make the Straits impassable for a few weeks at a time. There are too many shoreline bunkers and caves stuffed with speedboats carrying mines or with (or without) missiles on launchers.
When I look at Google Earth, I see interlocking areas of responsibility with a built in degree of operational flexibility usually seen only in video games. I fully expect that the
Iranians have used their Chinese contacts to hard-wire a lot of this coastline infrastructure with fiberoptic, backed up with redundant cell links... which are just icing, since the obvious default strategy for units cut off from Iranian central command will be to make the Straits impassable. Don't need comms for that.
Don't attack U.S. interests without plausible deniability unless there's a Democrat administration. But everybody already knows that one.
IF the carrier battle groups were being conveniently scheduled for possible action against Iran in September. Since basing them outside of the Persian Gulf would place them farther away from the battlefield than airfields we already operate from, I assume its expected them to operate within the Persian Gulf.
While I do agree that the islands in the Straits of Hormuz are a tactical obstacle with respect to major military operations in the Persian Gulf, it really makes no sense to use several (or even one)
CBG to neutralize that threat. Based on the small geographic area of the Straits of Hormuz, we'd gain nothing by trying to establish a military presence on any of those islands. Simply removing the Iranian presence would be sufficient, and turning them into uninhabitable chunks of rubble would be the best way to do that.
Our biggest air base in the Middle East is just 150 miles away, and Diego Garcia is also loaded with aircraft waiting for an opportunity to pulverize Iranians dug in on what are essentially stationary bullseyes in the Straits. Positioning several CBG’s in range to do a job we are already capable of doing now wouldn’t make sense. Neither would planning an amphibious landing on islands that would serve no purpose to us once Iranian forces were removed from them.
Therefore, unless the plan is to operate the several available CBG's within the Persian Gulf, I don’t consider it relevant to connect their availability with the rumored building momentum within the Bush administration to strike Iran.
We have the carriers there to "THREATEN" and to focus attention. They are floating propaganda.
By the way, my money is still on
a U.S. deep strike executed after the election. The objective will be aimed at destroying Iran's ability to enrich uranium, possibly including a ground insertion(s) aimed at gathering site intelligence to refine /validate our intelligence estimates. EMP is a good idea. Tactical EMP application is easy. You dont have to do the nuke thing 300 miles up anymore. You can EMP with artillery shells and JDAMS. Nuclear terrorism is the next big thing. Bush has one more adult job to do before leaving office.
If he doesn't do it, the Israelis will use what tools they have available to achieve the same objective. There isnt going to be peace. the wars are inevitable and necessary.
If you can get people in on the ground, destroying a working cascade in place is a great way to make a Superfund site.
UF6 gas is reported to be exceptionally toxic. The dirtier issue is that it's not enough to destroy the stuff, you need to get rid of the people who know how to rebuild the stuff. Ugly, but true nonetheless. Blowing up the centrifuges will put them back a few years. Remove the engineers who know how to build and tune them and they're back a whole lot more.
Hit the place and let the radioactive hexafluoride toxics kill the personnel. "...destroying a working cascade in place is a great way to make a Superfund site.."
Destroying anything with a < 10KT yield enhanced fallout nuke just about guarantees that, yes. There is not much return in attacking the infrastructure if it can be easily restored by merely writing checks.
Which is exactly why it is in our best interest to see that Israel isn't forced to act unilaterally.
The civilized world has watched for years as Islam suited up for the first nuclear terror strike. Everybody knows what ends the Iranians intend. Everyone knows who the first target will be. The U.N. (emphatically NOT representative as a subset of the civilized world)has stood by across the decades as a corrupt, silent witness to multiple genocides and has long
defined zionism as equal to terrorism... so the only world body that might have stature in mediating the crisis is worse than a disinterested spectator. There are no easy answers here, just clear ones.
"Nuclear terrorism is the next big thing."
"The civilized world has watched for years as Islam suited up for the first nuclear terror strike."
From a strategic rather than tactical point of view Norman Podhoretz has it right -
we are now engaged in World War IV, and it will be a long war; and it will likely become a nuclear/biotech war. If you look at the way things unraveled in World War I and World War II you'll notice that things went much worse than everyone expected. If you count Korea and Vietnam as parts of World War III, i.e.: the Cold War, the same can be said of it as well. I believe a much worse than expected outcome could also occur in this war - but I'd like to be proven wrong.
The only way to a better outcome is for liberty-loving nations to fight on their own terms, not the terms of the totalitarian liberty-haters – we must take the initiative and keep our enemies confused and off-balance. In order to avoid a world-wide catastrophe as seen in World War II,
we'll eventually have to decisively wage and win World War IV with all the courage and creativity of Stonewall Jackson, Raymond Spruance, Dwight Eisenhower and William Casey. We should not allow our enemies to gain sufficient strength to turn the tables – to become an existential threat to our liberty like Nazi Germany – better to nip them in the bud even if the cost is high. The cost will be much higher if we fail to take the initiative.
The price of liberty is the struggle for liberty - and better to die than to live without it..
I think war with Iran has been inevitable for years. It will get worse not better. We will still be at this twenty years from now...although Iran may be long gone by then.Source Author: seraph1
