Iran — A War has Begun

Iran­ian mar­itime capa­bil­i­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly to wage asym­met­ric war­fare have, appar­ent­ly, improved con­sid­er­ably since the tanker war of the 1980s. But it is clear that the impend­ing con­flict will have lit­tle sem­blance to the 80s when the scope and inten­si­ty were lim­it­ed. “Asym­met­ric” war­fare essen­tial­ly refers to the way a weak­er adver­sary can attempt to counter a much stronger mil­i­tary play­er by adopt­ing a vari­ety of tac­tics and weapons sys­tems to cre­ate an alter­na­tive to a sim­ple head-to-head con­test. In the broad­est sense of the word it entails a ‘Denial Strat­e­gy’ pit­ted against a ‘Con­trol Strategy’. 

Map 1: Strait of Hor­muz Source: www.bbc.co/news 10 Jan­u­ary 2012 Click to enlarge

The UN rat­i­fied four rounds of sanc­tions against Iran between 2006 and 2010. These sanc­tions include a ban on the sup­ply of heavy weapon­ry and nuclear-relat­ed tech­nol­o­gy to Iran, a block on Iran­ian arms exports and an asset freeze on key indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies. Res­o­lu­tion 1929, passed in 2010, man­dates car­go inspec­tions to detect and stop Iran’s acqui­si­tion of illic­it mate­ri­als. The Euro­pean Union (EU) has imposed its own restric­tions on trade in equip­ment which could be used for ura­ni­um enrich­ment and has put in place an asset freeze on a list of 39 indi­vid­u­als and 141 com­pa­nies and organ­i­sa­tions which it believes are help­ing advance the country’s nuclear pro­gramme. On 23 Jan­u­ary 2012, EU approved a ban on imports of Iran­ian crude oil, a freeze of assets belong­ing to the Cen­tral Bank of Iran and a ban on all trade in gold and oth­er pre­cious met­als with the bank and oth­er pub­lic bodies.

Iran and espe­cial­ly the naval ele­ments of its Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps, have sought to devel­op a unique denial naval force based large­ly upon flotil­las of fast, attack crafts backed up by a vari­ety of crafts capa­ble of lay­ing mines, con­ven­tion­al and midget sub­marines. These are sup­port­ed by shore-based anti-ship­ping mis­siles, air­craft, rock­ets and artillery all with rudi­men­ta­ry com­mand and con­trol. The the­o­ret­i­cal prob­lem with asym­metric­i­ty in the Iran­ian con­text is that it draws inspi­ra­tion from guer­ril­la land war­fare doc­trines which in the mar­itime domain trans­lates to an inabil­i­ty to go beneath the sur­veil­lance blan­ket or threat­en ver­sa­tile com­mand and con­trol struc­tures; counter pre­ci­sion strikes and fatal­ly so, to break through envelop­ing manoeuvres.

The Per­sian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz

The Per­sian Gulf is a 600 mile water body that flows into the Ara­bi­an Sea through the Strait of Hor­muz, it splits the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la from Iran (see Map 1). 

Whether Iran has the polit­i­cal sagac­i­ty to cope with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with­out giv­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for the US to take recourse to arms is a moot ques­tion, for if it does not it goes the Libya-Iraq way.

The Strait of Hor­muz is one of the most crit­i­cal mar­itime choke­points of the con­tem­po­rary glob­al ener­gy sys­tem. Through its nar­rows (less than 34 miles) close to 18 mbl of oil, a fifth of glob­al con­sump­tion, cours­es through every day along two, 2 mile wide ship­ping lanes car­ried onboard 5,800 hulls (approx) annu­al­ly (all fig­ures sourced from Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, USA). The north and east­ern side of the strait is dom­i­nat­ed by the Iran­ian coast­line while the south­ern side by Oman and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates. Traf­fic den­si­ty is high and well reg­u­lat­ed, the waters are shal­low and do not favour sub­ma­rine oper­a­tions and the con­strict­ed nature of the sea­way does not sup­port large scale stealth oper­a­tions or large force manoeu­vres. The Gulf nations pro­duce near­ly 30 per cent of glob­al oil while sit­ting on 57 per cent of the world’s crude reserves. It is also the repos­i­to­ry of 45 per cent of proven world gas reserves.

Iran and espe­cial­ly the naval ele­ments of its Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps, has sought to devel­op a unique denial naval force based large­ly upon flotil­las of fast, attack crafts backed up by a vari­ety of crafts capa­ble of lay­ing mines, con­ven­tion­al and midget sub­marines. These are sup­port­ed by shore­based anti-ship­ping mis­siles, air­craft, rock­ets and artillery all with rudi­men­ta­ry com­mand and control

Clos­ing the Gulf

Three issues have to be addressed when assess­ing Iran’s abil­i­ty to close the Gulf as threat­ened peri­od­i­cal­ly. The first of these is the atti­tude of glob­al ship­ping to dis­rup­tions; oper­a­tions. The sec­ond issue is Iran’s mil­i­tary poten­tial to ful­fil the task; as men­tioned ear­li­er nei­ther are they equipped mate­ri­al­ly nor tech­no­log­i­cal­ly for any sus­tained denial oper­a­tions when up against US and coali­tion forces. What they could achieve is dis­rup­tion through low lev­el spo­radic attacks on ship­ping and facil­i­ties in an effort to put pres­sure on the oth­er Gulf states. Even this will have to be weighed against the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a mas­sive US led con­ven­tion­al retal­i­a­tion that would quick­ly neu­tralise their war wag­ing capac­i­ty and crip­ple their econ­o­my. The third and most sig­nif­i­cant issue is that not only have the sanc­tions begun to bite and erode resolve, but also that Iran is itself acute­ly depen­dent on oil revenues.

The end analy­sis will sug­gest that Iran’s abil­i­ty to close the Strait of Hor­muz is hard­ly a fore­gone con­clu­sion (despite Vice Pres­i­dent Rahimi’s most recent dec­la­ra­tion that “not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait” as quot­ed by IRNA on 27 Decem­ber 2011), par­tic­u­lar­ly so in the light of the mount­ing US pres­ence in the­atre. In addi­tion any step tak­en by Iran to dis­rupt ener­gy flow will have crip­pling mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences. Under the cir­cum­stances the ques­tion real­ly is, is Iran will­ing to com­mit eco­nom­ic, mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal harakiri? And what of the strat­e­gy of despair: ter­ror? Giv­en the strate­gic sit­u­a­tion, this too would invite dis­pro­por­tion­ate retal­i­a­tion as indeed Iran would have not­ed the dev­as­ta­tion caused in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran’s nuclear programme

The Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (IAEA) has declared that medi­um-lev­el ura­ni­um enrich­ment had begun at the For­do plant near Qom in north­ern Iran. In reply Tehran has said it plans to car­ry out ura­ni­um enrich­ment there for pure­ly peace­ful pur­pos­es. The West argues Iran is build­ing a nuclear weapons capacity.

In Novem­ber 2011 the IAEA released its lat­est report on Iran’s nuclear pro­gramme, sug­gest­ing that Iran is secret­ly work­ing to obtain a nuclear weapon. Iran has dis­missed the claim. The IAEA has long expressed con­cern about Iran’s nuclear pro­gramme, but its lat­est report lays out the case in much greater detail than before. Draw­ing on evi­dence pro­vid­ed by more than 10 mem­ber states as well as its own infor­ma­tion, the IAEA said.

Iran had car­ried out activ­i­ties “rel­e­vant to the devel­op­ment of a nuclear explo­sive device”. The report doc­u­ments alleged Iran­ian test­ing of explo­sives, exper­i­ments on det­o­nat­ing a nuclear weapon and work on weaponisation.

While the west is con­vinced of the verac­i­ty of these reports, there remains the absence of a ‘smok­ing gun’. Notwith­stand­ing, Iran undoubt­ed­ly would have not­ed the West’s approach to Sad­dam and Gaddafi as opposed to Kim Jong Il and it is rea­son­able to assume that they would have come to the con­clu­sion that it was the North Kore­an nuclear arse­nal that made the dif­fer­ence. From this per­spec­tive it makes strate­gic log­ic for Iran to do noth­ing to change the West’s belief that they are very close to weapon­is­ing if not already in pos­ses­sion of a small nuclear arsenal.

Con­clu­sion

A war has begun in Iran. Its nature is as nev­er wit­nessed before; a com­bi­na­tion of covert action, eco­nom­ic sanc­tions, polit­i­cal iso­la­tion and the threat of mil­i­tary pre-emp­tion have not just crip­pled the Iran­ian econ­o­my but have check­mat­ed Iran’s war wag­ing poten­tial. The threat of unleash­ing an asym­met­ric con­flict is more pres­sure tac­tics than a cred­i­ble denial strat­e­gy and yet Solzhenitzin’s words in his book August 1914 ring a sin­is­ter warn­ing that “in war it is often small out­comes that deter­mines the course of his­to­ry”. Clear­ly the inva­sion of Iraq and the war in Libya are ele­ments of a grand scheme for even­tu­al con­trol reg­u­la­tion of the ener­gy resources of the Gulf region. The only obsta­cle to this design is Iran’s (erod­ing?) resolve and its nuclear pro­gramme which seem­ing­ly pro­vides the present reg­i­men with the soli­tary life­line for sur­vival. Whether Iran has the polit­i­cal sagac­i­ty to cope with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with­out giv­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for the US to take recourse to arms is a moot ques­tion, for if it does not it goes the Libya-Iraq way. In the mean­time nations like India must cul­ti­vate alter­nate ener­gy sources in prepa­ra­tion for the con­tin­gency when its ener­gy lines from Iran are severe­ly disrupted. 

About the Author
Vice Adm Vijay Shankar PVSM, AVSM (retd) — The writer holds an MSc in Defence Stud­ies and is a grad­u­ate of the Naval War Col­lege, New­port, Rhode Island, USA. He is the for­mer Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Andaman and Nico­bar Com­mand, C‑in‑C of the Strate­gic Forces Com­mand and Flag Offi­cer Com­mand­ing West­ern Fleet. His Com­mand and oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence are com­pre­hen­sive and include Com­mand of INS Viraat the air­craft car­ri­er. He is a mem­ber of the adjunct fac­ul­ty of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Advanced Stud­ies and he cur­rent­ly ten­ants the Admi­ral Katari Chair of Excel­lence at the Unit­ed Ser­vices Institute. 

Note by the Author:
The nature of war that we are cur­rent­ly wit­ness to in Iran does not read­i­ly fall into any mould. Covert action, cyber attacks and polit­i­cal alien­ation suf­fi­cient­ly rein­forced by eco­nom­ic sanc­tions and intru­sive nuclear inspec­tions on the one hand, has unleashed glob­al­ly dis­rup­tive nation­al­ism on the oth­er. Poten­tial­ly a far more dan­ger­ous effect is what nations over the last cen­tu­ry have turned to, the strat­e­gy of despair: terrorism 

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