For the Marine Corps, and to a lesser extent the Navy, the battle-plan adopted by General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of CENTCOM, was a disappointment. There would be no amphibious assaults against Iraq. Rather, two Marine divisions and accompanying Marine air wings would be deployed ashore in a manner that mimicked the employment of U.S. Army and Air Force assets. Moreover, the assignment given to the Marines -- assaulting the teeth of the Iraqi defenses to "fix" them in place while the U.S. Army conducted a sweeping flanking operation -- was considered suicidal. General Al Gray, the commandant of the Marine Corps, created a special "ad hoc study team," reporting to Maj. Gen. Matthew Caulfield, the commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Center, in Quantico, Virginia, to develop alternative courses of action for the employment of Marine combat units. Because of my experience with 7th MAB, I was assigned to the team as its intelligence officer.
After considering several options, the team settled on a bold division-sized amphibious assault on the Al Faw peninsula, which would advance inland and seize the Iraqi logistics hub of Az Zubair. One of the more innovative aspects of this plan, known by the code name "Operation Tiger," was the employment of existing roll-on, roll-off (Ro-Ro) shipping as improvised causeways, allowing for the rapid transfer of combat-ready forces from ship to shore. This bypassed the need for the kind of port infrastructure usually required to offload a division-sized assault force. OPLAN 1002 called for a division-sized force being able to be projected ashore at D-Day plus 12 (i.e., 12 days after the initial assault); Operation Tiger envisioned a division-sized force ashore at D-Day plus one, with Az Zubair captured by D-Day plus 4.
While Operation Tiger received the enthusiastic endorsement of Caulfield, Gray and Headquarters Marine Corps, its unconventional approach to amphibious operations proved too much for Schwarzkopf and his CENTCOM planning staff, who were married to their operational concept. There would be no amphibious forcible-entry operations during Operation Desert Storm. (As a footnote, I was approached by the chief of staff of CENTCOM Special Operations Command to adapt aspects of Operation Tiger so that Arab coalition forces could be rapidly moved into Kuwait City; concerns over Iraqi mines and casualties ended this effort as well.)
The next adaptation of OPLAN 1002 came in 2003, when U.S. forces were deployed to the Persian Gulf (again, using friendly aerial and seaports of debarkation in Kuwait) to participate in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. The forces deployed in support of the Iraqi invasion (192,000 U.S. forces, accompanied by 45,000 British and a few thousand other coalition forces) were considerably less than the 750,000 U.S. forces deployed during Operation Desert Storm. Even so, it took several months for these forces to be assembled and equipped for combat operations under permissive conditions. (Of note, the only amphibious assault conducted during the invasion was done by the British, who took four days to secure the Al Faw peninsula using two battalions of Royal Marines facing light resistance.)
Despite the massive size of its annual budget, the U.S. military today is but a shadow of its former self when it comes to amphibious operations. The U.S. Marines are not able to conduct brigade-sized forcible entry operations except under ad hoc conditions, and even then, only against a lightly held objective. Any notion of landing Marines on a contested shore in Iran is suicidal. And yet any plan to secure the Strait of Hormuz would require the seizure of Iranian-held islands located in the strait, the port city of Bandar Abbas, and the entire Iranian coastline along the strait inland to depths of up to 50 kilometers. This mission far exceeds the operational capacity and capability of the Marine Corps. Air power alone cannot accomplish this objective either; as previously discussed, the U.S. aircraft carriers will be operating under duress, reducing effectiveness, and U.S. airbases in the region will be under near continuous Iranian ballistic missile attack, resulting in their closure or reduced effectiveness.
The biggest threat facing any U.S. force assembled in the region will come from Iran's ballistic missiles. During the Gulf War, I was involved in the campaign to hunt down and destroy Iraqi ballistic missiles that were being fired at targets in Israel and the Arabian Peninsula. We enjoyed virtual air supremacy and were able to dedicate thousands of sorties in support of the counter-missile campaign. Special operations teams were inserted on the ground inside Iraq to assist in this effort. At the end of the day, not a single Iraqi missile launcher was destroyed by coalition forces. Today, in Yemen, the Houthi rebels use ballistic missiles to attack Saudi Arabian targets. Again, the Saudi Air Force, operating with total impunity (and supported by U.S. intelligence, which provides targeting support), has been unable to prevent the Houthi from launching missiles. Mobile relocatable targets such as the vehicle-mounted ballistic missiles employed by Iran will be virtually impossible to stop; any operation against Iran can anticipate continuous attacks from Iranian ballistic missiles for the duration of the conflict.
The version of OPLAN 1002 being discussed at the Pentagon today is a limited-scope operation involving some 120,000 troops. This force would have minimal forcible-entry capability, and instead be geared toward conducting an air campaign designed to neutralize Iran's nuclear infrastructure while securing the Strait of Hormuz; as such, most of the forces involved would be deployed to regional airbases and aboard U.S. Navy ships. As has already been discussed, this force will not be able to accomplish its mission of securing the Strait of Hormuz, which means that all oil shipments transiting the strait will be halted. Moreover, the Houthi drone attack against Saudi oil-pumping stations (using Iranian drones) has shown that the totality of the oil-producing infrastructure in the region is vulnerable to interdiction. As such, any military operation against Iran will result in the near total shutdown of oil exportation from the Gulf Arab states, which will have a devastating impact on the economy of the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world.
This modified OPLAN 1002 will most likely make heavy use of air power, including both air- and sea-launched cruise missiles. While the U.S. can launch several hundred cruise missiles a day against Iranian targets, this number is virtually meaningless. Iran has spent decades preparing for a war with the U.S. and has studied American weaponry to a degree that is perhaps unappreciated in the West. Iran has in its possession intact examples of U.S. cruise missiles recovered from battlefields in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as from scores of missiles that flew off course and landed on Iranian soil). Russia has shared with Iran radar and electronic intelligence on the U.S. cruise missiles, and Iran's air defenses are prepared to engage. Likewise, Iran has been carefully monitoring U.S. air operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria and has collected similarly in-depth intelligence on U.S. aircraft and air-delivered munitions. The successful Iranian operation to hijack an American RQ-170 stealth drone over Afghanistan and divert it to Iran, where it was taken under control and reverse-engineered by Iranian scientists, stands as an example of Iran's capabilities in this regard.
It will take the U.S. weeks, if not months, to deploy enough air power into the region to sustain a meaningful air campaign against Iran. During this time, Iran will disperse its forces to remote sites, many of which are underground and impervious to attack. U.S. cruise missiles, costing some $1.4 million each, will be destroying empty buildings, while U.S. aircraft will have to fly in contested airspace for the first time this century, decreasing operational efficiency while suffering casualties in terms of downed aircraft and aircrew that could very well prove to be unsustainable. Any attempt to militarily engage Iran with a force level of 120,000 troops would be sheer folly and doomed to fail. This does not mean Iran will escape destruction -- far from it. U.S. aircraft will reach their targets, and U.S. munitions will be employed with great effect. Iran's civil and industrial infrastructure will be devastated, and tens of thousands of Iranian civilians would be killed. But the U.S. air campaign will not defeat the Iranian military, which will not only defend Iranian territory but also strike out against U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, as well as military and industrial targets, including oil and gas infrastructure, of any nation providing assistance to the American war effort.
The bottom line is that any military engagement of Iran based upon the force structure supported by the 120,000-troop figure cited by the media cannot, and will not, result in a victory for the United States. Moreover, by initiating an armed conflict with such limited resources, the U.S. could very well be setting itself up for defeat. Iran has the capability to sink U.S. naval vessels, shoot down U.S. aircraft and destroy airbases supporting U.S. air operations. Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq could very easily overrun U.S. military bases in those two countries, annihilating the garrisons based there. U.S. air power that would normally be employed to defend these garrisons would be tied down in supporting operations over Iran.
President Trump has dismissed the reports citing the plan to deploy 120,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf as "fake news," noting that if he were to engage Iran militarily, he would use "a hell of a lot more troops than that." This is closer to the truth. OPLAN 1002, in its current iteration (which is derived from realistic calculations regarding actual force availability), probably envisions up to 500,000 U.S. troops for any full-scale war with Iran. This number would support an actual invasion of Iran, which would probably be conducted from bases in Azerbaijan and from a beachhead established at Chah Bahar, on the coast of the Arabian Sea.
There are three major problems with any "massive intervention" operation against Iran. First and foremost, it would effectively denude U.S. forces worldwide, meaning the U.S. would lack any meaningful military capacity to respond to crises in Europe or the Pacific. Second, it would require significant regional support, including from Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan, which is highly problematic. Even here there would be no guarantee of an American victory. Iran was behind the successful resistance of Hezbollah against Israel in August 2006, and there is every reason to believe Iran has prepared a defense designed to lure any invading force deep into its territory, and then cut it off and destroy it. While the defeat of the U.S. military on the battlefield is an unlikely outcome, denying the U.S. an outright victory is a distinct possibility.
This is the reality that confronts Trump as he wrestles with the consequences of his hyper-aggressive policy posture toward Iran. Having embraced a policy of "maximum pressure" designed to compel Iran into foregoing its nuclear program, Trump is now confronted with the harsh fact his policy has failed, and the consequences of this failure could very well mean an Iran with increased nuclear capability, with the U.S. unable to build a coalition capable of reining it in. Trump has, for the moment, put the brakes on any precipitous rush toward war with Iran, instructing the Defense Department not to provoke a confrontation. However, he still must deal with European anger over the U.S. policy of economic sanctions targeting Iran and the detrimental impact of his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
In the spring of 2018, Trump ignored the advice of his then-secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster to stick with the Iran nuclear deal. Instead, he replaced both with Mike Pompeo and John Bolton respectively, each of whom advised Trump to withdraw from that agreement, thereby setting the U.S. on its current policy course regarding Iran. Trump ran for president on a platform he would not only get the U.S. out of its seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but avoid any similar misadventures. He could easily be facing Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and the last thing he wants to do is offset the former vice president's politically damaging support for the Iraq war by getting the U.S. bogged down in a similarly disastrous conflict in Iran -- especially one so clearly a product of Trump's own political miscalculations.
There remains the possibility Trump will back away from his threat to eliminate Iran as a nation state and instead focus his efforts on sustaining the current economic boom upon which his bid for reelection hinges. Iran is not looking for a fight, but neither is it willing to accede to the unrealistic demands placed on it by the Trump administration regarding its nuclear program and regional presence. By raising the specter of an all-or-nothing confrontation, however, Trump is creating the conditions for a self-fulfilling prophecy, one in which he will get the war he claims not to want while costing him the second term he claims he does. But the demise of Donald Trump's political ambition is the least of the casualties of such a policy. A war with Iran will cost America tens of thousands of casualties, while killing or wounding hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Any U.S. victory would be pyrrhic in nature, crippling the U.S. and global economies while further diminishing America's already diminished position in the world.
But, perhaps most important, it would be a war that, if America's experience with OPLAN 1002 tells us anything, we may not win -- at least not in a conventional sense. The prospect of an American invasion force stalled in the deserts of Iran, surrounded by a hostile population and under continuous attack, is very real, and meets the "extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies and partners" threshold for the employment of nuclear weapons as set forth in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review published by the Department of Defense.
It is this reality that may have prompted Trump's threat to "end" Iran -- a madman's lashing out in frustration at a world that refuses to behave as he desires, and therefore must be destroyed as a result.
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