In January I posted one of the pieces of writing I did for a research project about the political history of modern Iran. The following piece was my concluding essay for the project, drawing together themes I had been studying for several months into a broad look at US-Iranian competition in the Middle East.
Maintaining U.S. Primacy in the Middle East [Scribd Document]
Dear Galen: On July 3rd of last year, you wrote in response to one of my comments: "... However I won't go into too much detail right now as I'm working on something right now related to attacks on oil infrastructure similar to my project on using ballistic missiles as an anti-ship weapon."
ReplyDeleteAny progress on that? Is that project still on the back burner? If so, I would appreciate it if you would bear this in mind: my thinking has been that probably the main deterrent that keeps the US from attacking Iran is Iran's ability to inflict long-term damage to the oil-exporting ability of Saudi Arabia as well as the Persian Gulf littoral statelets (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain & the UAE) by taking out oil pump stations and deep-sea port piers (supertanker docks).
I would really love to hear your take on whether you think Iran could inflict enough damage on these handful of targets (particularly the 18 docking bays at Ras Tanura just north of Damman in Saudi Arabia). I assume Iran would have to be able to inflict this damage in the first three days of hostilities or the first 7 days at most, as their ability to do so will have been taken out after that by the US Air Force.
The significance of this question of course lies in the fact that if the answer to it is affirmative, then it goes a long way towards explaining why an attack on Iran has not taken place as of yet, and in prognosticating that such an attack is unlikely to take place. (The world cannot afford to be cut off from that much oil for as long a period of time it would take to put the pump stations and ports back in operation...)
Thank you, and thanks again for all your great posts.
PS. Richard Steven Hack and I have an exchange of comments about this in the latest thread at RFI, in case you are interested.
"I assume Iran would have to be able to inflict this damage in the first three days of hostilities or the first 7 days at most, as their ability to do so will have been taken out after that by the US Air Force"
ReplyDeleteHow much the israeli air force did 'take out' the ability of Hezbollah to fire rockets and missiles into their own territory during the 2006 war??
Seems to me that Hezbollah was still firing rockets with great volume and accuracy into the 33rd day of war.
You really think Iran is not able to do the same???????
Idiot.
Greetings U.U.
ReplyDeleteI ended up generating a significant amount of research for that project but I haven't brought it together into a cohesive thesis yet.
The problem is that I know just enough about the technical aspects to realize just how little I know in the grand scheme of things. (I believe there's an actual term for this, but it escapes my mind at the moment) For instance, I was plotting out an IRIAF strike profile against Saudi facilities near Damman and got side-tracked for a day or two calculating the fuel consumption of aircraft with specific weapon load-outs.
Though it's on the back-burner right now, it's one of the two major projects I have in sight for this blog. The other one being a refocusing on IMINT and a cataloging of the order of battle of Iranian military forces. I'm doing this since that's one of the more exclusive features on this blog. (As far as I can tell, the Arkenstone is the only English-language source that has attempted to go deeper then divison or brigade-level analysis). I'm going to be pretty busy this Spring with school stuff but I might aim to put at least something out then, even if it's just a collection of Google-Earth graphics.
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I completely agree with you that the deterrence power of the oil weapon (combined with the larger A2/AD threat) is the cornerstone of Iran's military-political strategy.
The question of conflict in the Gulf is fundamentally one of cost-benefit analysis. If Washington perceives it to be in their security interests to attack Iran I have no doubt that they would. That being said, the balance has never swung that way and likely never will (thanks in large part to the deterrent power of Iran's military)
- Galen
Along with your theme, I would suggest you check this out: http://osgeoint.blogspot.com/2012/02/uae-4th-air-defense-artillery-regiment.html
ReplyDelete