GULF OF OMAN (May
22, 2019). F/A-18F Super Hornet making an arrested landing on the
flight deck
of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln
(CVN 72). Photo: United States Navy.
by Paul
Rogers
Power vacuums in
the Pentagon as a pattern of attacks across the Middle East look
suspiciously like a demonstration of Iranian ‘irregular’ power.
The evolution of the
US-Iran confrontation gets more complex by the day, a matter of smoke
and mirrors with multiple accusations and uncertainties, and domestic
politics constantly driving international actions.
For Trump, the
current complication is that his Acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick
Shanahan, has suddenly withdrawn
his application for the permanent job because of family issues
dating back some years. Not only does this leave a leadership vacuum
at the top of the Pentagon but Trump’s intended replacement for
Shanahan, army secretary Mark Esper, leaves a gap in the army job
only a month after the air force secretary, Heather Wilson, herself
stepped down.
In spite of this
uncertainty, the military rhetoric coming out of Washington is
growing tougher. Much is being made of the air
force and navy firepower being moved towards the Gulf just as the
White House insists that Iran has been responsible for the recent
attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
Iran is not the only
country that the US is berating. One of the most senior US military
commanders, Paul Selva – an air force general and vice-chair of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff – this week reminded
other states which import oil and gas via the Strait of Hormuz
that keeping the sea lanes open is not just a US responsibility. If a
war comes, other countries will be expected to play a substantial
role. Selva pointed out that the Gulf is far less important to the US
than it was during the ‘tanker war’ of the 1980s, with fracking
and other new technologies tapping more fossil fuels at home.
Interestingly the
one country that could contribute almost overnight – the UK (as
explained here a couple of weeks ago) – is in the middle of
internal political upheavals. The rivals to replace Theresa May at
Number 10 are vying with each other to be the most macho and
pro-Trump. This is hardly likely to aid rational policy development,
as both remaining candidates claim to want to make Britain great
again.
Trump’s own
rhetoric has been toned down but his problem with Iran remains and is
made worse by that country’s own behaviour. It may be difficult to
accept that almost everything that Iran is currently doing speaks of
a canny assessment of Trump and a coordinated approach, but it is a
possibility that does deserves examining.
Iran’s show of
strength?
Earlier this week
Iran announced that it would step up low-level uranium enrichment.
This is the process that produces fuel for nuclear power stations;
weapons-grade uranium must be enriched much further. [JR1] The
nuclear deal that Iran signed in 2015 with China, France, Germany,
Russia, the UK and the US – the US withdrew from the agreement last
year – limits the amount of uranium it can enrich. Iran said that
it would exceed that limit on 27 June. Meanwhile, consider the
military and paramilitary happenings of the past couple of weeks.
All the tanker
attacks have been low-level, typically using small limpet mines
placed above the water line: enough to have an obvious effect but
unlikely to cause serious casualties or sink ships. The attacks have
all been outside the Persian Gulf, off the coast of the Arabian Sea
and in the vicinity of Fujairah. This is the terminus for a pipeline
that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, with its Iranian coastline, to
bring oil overland from Abu Dhabi.
Another pipeline
that avoids the strait runs across Saudi Arabia from its eastern
oilfields to a terminal on its Red Sea coast: the Saudis report that
this was recently
hit by an armed drone believed fired by the Houthi rebels in
Yemen, allied to Iran.
In other
developments this week, three
Katyusha rockets were fired at Camp Taji, an Iraqi army base
north of Baghdad where US trainers work. The Balad air base, also
north of Baghdad, was
hit by mortar fire in a separate attack.
Thus, tankers are
attacked outside the Strait of Hormuz showing that bypassing the
strait through Fujairah is still vulnerable to disruption, and an
alternative pipeline route across Saudi Arabia is also attacked. Add
to this the paramilitary attacks in Iraq on two bases used by US
trainers of the Iraqi army, along with Iran threatening to respond to
Trump’s abandonment of the nuclear deal, and you get a picture of a
country not willing to buckle and also ready to send reminders of how
an ‘irregular’ war could be waged.
This could all be
coincidence, but it really is stretching things a bit when you put it
together. Moreover, the risk of paramilitary attacks is certainly
taken seriously by the Pentagon: witness the decision to send 2,500
extra troops to the region to help protect US bases and facilities.
Also being taken
seriously is the shooting
down of a US navy drone in what Tehran claims was Iranian
airspace. The drone in question, a Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton, is
one of the largest and most expensive uncrewed aircraft in the world,
the size of a strike aircraft and costs $182 million apiece. It has a
range of over 9,000 miles, can fly for 30 hours and reach an altitude
of 60,000 feet. If it was flying anything like that high there will
be questions asked in the Pentagon and the White House over how the
Iranians could have managed to destroy it.
On the US side,
Trump’s unpredictability and bombast, coupled with personnel
upheavals in the Pentagon, do not make for sound judgement.
Yesterday’s approval and then aborting of attacks on Iran in
retaliation for the drone strike could have been a warning, or
indecision, or both.
However, there are
signs of Washington drawing back. One key indicator is that the US
Special Representative for Iran, Brian
Hook, travels to Paris early next week to meet senior French,
German and British officials. Hook is an experienced White House
advisor going back two decades. If the Europeans put serious pressure
on the Trump administration to reduce tension, that might just have
an effect. The bigger issue, though, is that it may be Iran rather
than the US setting the agenda.
Paul
Rogers is professor in the department
of peace studies at
Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's
international-security
editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since
28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford
Research Group.
His books include Why
We’re Losing the War on Terror
(Polity,
2007), and Losing
Control: Global Security in the 21st Century
(Pluto
Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers
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