The Heat is On: Options for Deterrence in the Middle East

As usual, late-breaking news demands to be included in this article.  I’m not going to rewrite the piece to reflect any potential change in likelihood, this weekend, that a response to a major, concerted attack on Israel – and very possibly U.S. interests as well – may shortly be in order.  But the tea leaves seem to read that way.

Read this X post carefully.  The original post by Iran’s Khamenei was made on 3 October 2023, four days before 10/7.  But it was just pinned on Khamenei’s X account on 2 August 2024; today.

I verified the contents of that alert here.

A sample of the RUMINT on preparations for a major attack by Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

I stand by my assessment of what the current administration – “Petunia” – will do.  Don’t be fooled by whatever it does.  It won’t be effective or even strategically intelligent.  At most, it will be intended, like recent moves to staunch the illegal flow across the U.S. border, and rumors today of an impending rate cut by the Fed, to make voters feel like things are trending a little better in time for the election in November.

Although there is no reason to expect the current U.S. administration, which for rhetorical convenience I will call “Petunia,” to take any effective action in the Middle East crises of 2024, there are actions the U.S. could take that would do some good.

The purpose of this article is to briefly list some of them.  These are measures for which there is already justification, although in a political sense, some of it is aging quickly.  The measures could be implemented now, based on already-demonstrated threats to U.S. interests and those of our regional partners.  If there were a sense of some of them being premature, they could be on the shelf for immediate use when fresh justification emerged.

The shorthand of “Petunia” is a remedy for the problem of what to call an administration that isn’t actually being “run” by the nominal President, Joe Biden, or the suddenly-activated Vice President, Kamala Harris.  None of “Biden,” “Harris,” or “Biden-Harris’ Administration is an accurate name for what the sitting administration is.  We could call it the Great and Powerful Oz, but that, while allusive as heck, is oversyllabic and clunky.  “Petunia” is homage to an admiral I once worked for, who said, in his admiral-like way, “Look, call it whatever.  Call it ‘Petunia.’  We all know what it is.”

We do indeed.  The problem with Petunia is that it isn’t going to make any effective strategic moves.  Not, at least, any moves that advance U.S. interests.  So this article isn’t about what we might expect from the existing U.S. administration – Petunia – but what an administration with different leadership could do.

I am sorry to say, but must be clarifyingly honest, that there are no Democratic leaders today who would act effectively.  It would have to be a Republican administration, and one that understood the need for acting but had no intention of parking the United States in the middle of everything, laying sod, and hanging lace curtains.

Here is the set-up context.  A colleague observed on Thursday (yesterday) that Iran isn’t maneuvering toward full-scale war and doesn’t show interest in doing so at the moment.  I agree.  [That’s in spite of the ayatollah’s little post on X/Twitter, above.  A full-scale war would basically involve sustained action by Iran, and Iran isn’t in a position to bring that.  It looks like Iran, if it goes, will probably lob a lot of missiles, rockets, and drones; and Hezbollah will open up, probably not only with airborne volleys but with asymmetric ground action against Israel as well. Previews of such ground action have been out there for a year and a half at this point.  It must be considered likely.  Northern Israel has been prepared along the most probable avenues of approach, with tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated to the south.  But it could still get ugly. – J.E.]

To continue: That’s a mildly positive factor (Iran not being ready for full-scale war), but it mustn’t be viewed in isolation.  It’s a war that would come home to Iran, and imperil the radical regime there, that the mullahs aren’t interested in.  By contrast, their interest is unflagging in the continued campaign of disruptive and lethal harassment by the regime’s terrorist clients against Israel and global shipping.

Tehran is also not interested in a war that would threaten to roll back its advances over the last decade into Iraq and Syria.  The effective control of territory there for the regime’s purposes has been consolidated, and the regime doesn’t want to lose it (or have to spend resources fighting to defend it).

The reason Iran’s not interested at the moment in full-scale war is that conditions are not favorable to Iran for full-scale war.  Iran doesn’t have the means and resources to achieve success with full-scale war.  It would be a bad idea for the mullahs to angle for one.

What this means is not that we should sit back and relax.  Rather, we should take advantage of Tehran’s preference to avoid full-scale war for the time being, and make conditions even more unfavorable for the radical regime.  Iran is less likely to retaliate meaningfully now than in the future.  And we can shape now how meaningfully the regime perceives itself able to retaliate in the future.

The relentless career of Iran-backed terror-war in the region is fully sufficient justification for making decisions on this basis.  The mullahs may not want full-scale war in a conventional sense to come to their doorstep, or their outposts in Iraq and Syria, but that doesn’t by any means signify a pacific attitude about their priorities and strategy.  They are radical, militant, and quite prepared to inflict armed instability and destruction on everyone else.

The following are a small starter-set of measures the U.S. could take to robustly enhance a sense of deterrence, wariness, and discouragement that the Iranian regime would receive great benefit from.  Demonstrating our capability and willingness to do these things would be most instructive after the catastrophic flight from Afghanistan and our failure for two and a half years to support a decisive war of maneuver and focus to retake eastern Ukraine, rather than bizarrely overfunding an awful bleed-out of Ukraine through an attritional standoff.

I will list a mere six suggested actions in this list.

1. Comprehensively destroy the weapons and other resources being used by the Houthis in Yemen to terrorize global shipping. Level the Houthis’ relatively primitive infrastructure into utter ruin.  Leave them unable to defend themselves effectively, much less launch missiles and drones at commercial shipping.

Having bombed the Houthis into a less confident and more compliant frame of mind, encourage and back a quick settlement for the internal arrangements of Yemen, brokered mainly by the current backers of the major non-Houthi parties there, Saudi Arabia and UAE.  Use U.S. power to shoulder off unfavorable influences from Iran and the UN, among others.

The goal is to administer a major setback to Iran in Yemen, achieve a settlement there that would last long enough to conclude the war of other Iran-backed terrorists on Israel, and restore global shipping to safety and the free use of the Red Sea chokepoint.

2. As discussed before in a recent article, take on the Hezbollah arsenal in Lebanon by addressing it through the government in Beirut. Twist arms without apology or tentativeness in the approach.  Make it clear that the most prominent and freest-spending  of Beirut’s foreign patrons wants that arsenal whittled down to nothing, and isn’t taking no for an answer.  Make it clear to Hezbollah that the U.S. has no intention of sitting passive while the terror group expands war in the Middle East.

Lebanon and Hezbollah can get bombed if that’s their choice, but Hezbollah’s 100,000-rocket inventory is illicit, destabilizing, and going down.  They can do it the easy way or the hard way.

This will make the most impact with the least need for live demonstrations if we’re already whacking the Houthis down with professional dispatch in Yemen.

At the same time, break the logjam on the arms Israel needs (i.e., those 2,000-lb bombs and JDAM kits) to interdict and prevent use of the Hezbollah arsenal, such that the threat from Israel and the disarmament diplomacy from the U.S. converge to achieve the most desirable result.

The goal is to remove the threat of the fabled Hezbollah arsenal so that there are no scary numbers or in extremis terror options for Israel to have to fear, and remain in a state of suspended national disruption for.

A follow-on campaign to de-Hezbollah-fy Lebanon is an obvious and necessary next step for the near future.  That would take longer, but Hezbollah can be significantly disarmed and isolated, and the major stake-owning powers of the region engaged for the next step, at the same time.

Again, the radical regime in Iran is not legitimately a stake-owning power.  It attacks the status quo and the general peace of the region at every opportunity.  The overwatch of strong-hand diplomacy, giving regional stake-owners space to act in with as little Iranian interference as possible, is what the power of the U.S. is for.

3. Be ready to impress Iran directly with some deterrent clarifications. Doing this should involve as little as possible in terms of interaction with Iranian territory.  It should be focused on measures that disrupt categories of key capabilities for a minimum length of time, such as 6 months.  Some measures would achieve more than that.

The first specific example is sinking all of Iran’s converted container ships, leaving them in a state of unrecoverable destruction.  One still-active ship, the Behshad, has already been used for intelligence support to Houthi attacks on merchant shipping, as well as attempted attacks on U.S. warships.  And in January 2024, Iran mounted a display of ballistic missile launches from another of the container ships, Shahid Mahdavi, converted to host multiple types of military capability for use by the IRGCN.

If Iran’s regime wants to get more ships sunk, retaliating for this move would reliably bring that about.

The goal would be to knock out at one blow a new capability Iran has had to work hard to create, and has shown the intention already to deploy into distant locations and use to threaten innocent shipping, chokepoints, and foreign territory.

This action by nature would inflict a loss it would take a good 18 months to begin redressing.  With number 6 in effect (below), it would be difficult to convert even one replacement container ship in that amount of time.

4. Another persuasive Iranian target would be the oil facility on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. The oil export infrastructure there is extremely important to Iran’s national industry; indeed, it’s hard to overstate its significance.  It would be a crushing blow to Iran to destroy it, and my suggestion is to hold that option in reserve and start by eliminating the Tee Jetty, Sea Island, and petrochemical piers, key features for efficient use of the installation.

If taking out the offshore pier isn’t enough of a deterrent and inhibitor of activity at the terminal, go ahead and blow up the works.

Iran isn’t confused about the U.S. ability to perform this feat.  The question would be American will.

The goal is to impose a high cost on terror activity and related disruptions fomented by the Iranian regime – this action in particular imposing a cost on the regime’s ability to earn cash from its  oil industry.  Nothing would hurt Iran’s oil exports more than disabling the facility on Kharg Island.  Merely knowing that a newly determined U.S. was prepared to take it out could have all the salutary effect needed.

5. A third proactive deterrent would be attacking a “key node” target set in the nuclear weapons program: one that doesn’t start with the primary nuclear facilities themselves, but administers a setback in linked capabilities that would impose significant recovery time.

At this stage in the development of the Iranian program, one of the highest-payoff target sets would be the dedicated power grid for a network of underground installations in which work is done on R&D and testing for warheads, other elements of a complete delivery system, and ballistic missiles.  The location in question is east of Tehran, between Parchin and the suburbs of Tehran, where the regime has put tremendous resources into creating underground infrastructure to support the final stage of its development path for a weapon:  mating a warhead to a missile delivery platform.

Trying to entirely destroy the underground network would be a very large task.  As a demonstration and focused setback to deter the regime, that level of effort would exceed the desired scale of engagement.  But the power grid supporting the vast network has to “breathe,” and is hence a vulnerability through which the enterprise can be crippled for a useful span of time.

This would be the toughest and most elaborate of the envisioned deterrent attacks, and the main one I would suggest holding in reserve.  [Again, if there’s a big “go” this weekend, an attack on this order would be justified sooner. – J.E.]  There may be other target sets to substitute for it; this one would disable some of the regime’s most prized and hardest-won infrastructure, and would affect facilities connected to the graduation-day goal of the nuclear program:  detonating a successful and deliverable warhead.  A setback of at least 6 months is achievable.

6. The final measure is strengthening U.S. sanctions to actually have bite again. At the moment, sanctions on Iran are either largely waived or meaningless, such as recent sanctions that list single individuals or named companies, whose involvement can simply be swapped out by Iran for different players (i.e., new shell companies with empty office addresses and phone numbers in Dubai and the Marshall Islands).  (See the most recent update from 30 July 2024 here.)

Effective sanctions have to deter the foreign entities that cooperate with Iranian actors.  Petunia isn’t deterring the foreign collaborators.  Unless those collaborators actually face pain and loss, U.S. sanctions won’t be effective at limiting Iran’s options for generating cash.

But fencing the terror-funding mullahs off from cash is exactly what a heathy U.S. administration should be doing.

Conclusion

Rather than try to refine this further, I will publish it as-is.  Obviously, it’s not certain that there will be a major missile-and-rocket attack on Israel this weekend (and potentially on U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria).  But the likelihood is high of such an attack soon, and reports of observed preparations are accelerating.  Attacks at the level of intrusiveness in this list, and with this type of focus, are what we should be considering.  If Iran lashes out further, destroying key defenses (e.g., the air defense network and ballistic missile inventory in garrison; the submarine fleet and warships) would be useful.  An undefended Iranian regime would have to think twice about everything else it did, starting with any race to detonate a nuclear warhead.

Petunia may not be able to do it.  But the United States could.

{Reposted from the author’s site}