Stardate 20020214.1003

(Captain's log): I've been thinking about the issues involved if we actually do go to war in Iraq.

Part I: Iranian intervention
Part II: The problem of air supremacy and general Iraqi tactics
Part III: Axis of attack
Part IV: Development of the battlefield
Part V: Why not like in Afghanistan?

One of the big questions will be whether Iran gets involved against us if we make a land attack from the Gulf of Arabia, either through Kuwait or from the mouth of the Euphrates river.

They stayed neutral in 1990, which is hardly surprising because at the time the only nation they hated more than the US was Iraq due to just having fought an inconclusive war with that nation which resulted in immense casualties. Since then the situation has changed.

The political question of whether Iran might get involved is very complicated and not one I want to deal with here. The question is not intentions but capabilities: if they did, what could they do?

One potential threat would be that the Iranian army might try to attack us in flank, but I don't consider that a serious problem. Their army was ineffective against the Iraqi army in the 1980's, and it is unlikely to do even as well against us. But the threat is real, and it would be necessary for the US in such a case to keep about a division (probably mech infantry or light infantry) on the Iranian border, just in case.

More important would be the potential Iran might have to impede our naval movement in the Gulf. They have four ways of doing that: attacks by their air force, by surface-to-surface antiship missiles, through the use of surface ships and via submarines.

Their surface threat is a joke. It amounts to little more than armed motorboats, few of which are bigger than a WWII PT boat.

Submarines might be more of a problem, but I'm not so sure that they are as big a threat as many people assume. One reason is that the Gulf is a horrible place for subs to operate because it is so shallow. Submarines like to operate in deep water, and the deepest point in the Gulf is only 60 meters, and most of it is much more shallow than that. Also, the waters are very clear. Submarines in the Gulf have a decent chance of being spotted visually by air patrol or even by satellites. And once you know where a sub is, that sub is doomed.

Iran also has anti-ship missiles. They don't have many, and most of the ones they do have are not very sophisticated. In recent memory there are two cases of those kinds of missiles being used in anger and both were effective. (Both were air-launched, but surface-launched missiles are comparable.) In the Falklands, HMS Sheffield was hit by two Exocet missiles and sunk. In the Gulf in the mid 1980's, Iraq launched two Exocet missiles against USS Stark, which was badly damaged but which survived.

However, the US navy has studied those events and learned from them. They have had fifteen years to prepare. Stark was operating alone and didn't expect an attack, so one of its main defense systems was not enabled. If the US Navy were supporting a major war against Iraq then ships would be operating in groups and all defenses would be turned on.

I believe that the greatest threat Iran has is mining. That isn't easily dealt with, especially if they have sophisticated mines, as is reported.

There is one interesting approach to dealing with them; it's not totally guaranteed but it does work pretty well, especially against unsophisticated mines. You take a ship you don't care about and you fill every unneeded space in it with styrofoam. Then you operate it with a small (very brave) crew and let it lead the fleet. Old oil tankers work really well for this. Such a ship can actually absorb a large number of mine hits without being disabled.

But you can't take precautions like this routinely, and you can't assume that all waters are mined at all times without paralyzing your fleet. That means that if Iran does resort to mining, some of our ships will get hit when minefields are discovered for the first time.

On the other hand, this would be something of a doomsday move by Iran, because it would not only impede US Navy traffic but also would stop all commercial shipping in the Gulf to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Iran itself. If Iran were directly threatened, it might be willing to do such a thing, but it's hard to conceive of the nation being willing to commit commercial suicide on behalf of Iraq.

The ultimate defense against any Iranian involvement is the threat of retaliation, and if the Afghan war has proved nothing else it is that the threat of US air strikes is credible. And no-one doubts the ability of the US Navy to impose a blockade on Iran.

Thus I don't expect that Iran will actually get actively involved should we end up fighting in Iraq.