(Editor’s Note: This article was submitted before the U.S.-Iran conflict began. We intentionally left the article as “forward looking” to signify the value of the analysis.) 

After successful US regime-change operations in Venezuela, Washington is aiming for similar endeavor again, this time in Middle East against Iran. Mass mobilization of US military assets—most notably the deployment of naval armada in the Arabia Sea, the forward deployment of Patriot air-defense system and THAAD missile defense systems, and the sudden evacuation of non-essential personnel from regional military bases, were among advanced preparatory measures by Washington for kinetic action against Iran. Amid heightening tension, few incidents preceded US military actions. Iran seized two foreign oil-tankers allegedly smuggling oil and had attempted to approach US flagged tankers. And a US Navy F-35C shot down a Shahed-139 MALE UAV in the Arabian Sea.

Amid growing tensions, hurried to leave the Persian Gulf. The US Department of Transportation Maritime Administration issued guidelines to US flagged commercial ships to keep distance from Iran’s territorial waters and reject Iranian forces permission to board ship.

It is apparent that Trump Administration does not want a prolonged war, rather a quick precise and decisive operation to facilitate regime change. The US Navy was expected to take the lead using carrier-based airpower and cruise-missile strikes from guided missile destroyers (DDGs) and nuclear guided missile attack submarines (SSGNs), followed by bombardment by US Air Force bombers flying from US mainland or from Diego Garcia.

But unlike the Venezuela operation, which was conducted in American backyard, Washington has limited territorial room available for military action against Tehran given limited territorial support by Gulf nations. Therefore, it is likely kinetic operations will be highly dependent on naval forces.

This makes complete sense. At sea, the US enjoys overwhelming technological superiority. The US Navy has an estimated nine warships in the region. Three Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) stationed in the Persian Gulf but of limited value as these vessels have little  offensive capability.

The Most prominent formation is the Carrier Battle Group led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), with embarked Carrier Air-Wing Nine (CVW-9). CVW-9 boasts F-35C Lightening-II stealth fighters, F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets attack aircraft, E/A-18G “Growler” electronic warfare jets, E-2D “Hawkeye” Airborne Early Warning Aircraft and MH-60R Sea Hawk Anti-Submarine Warfare helicopters. The Lincoln is accompanied by three Aegis-equipped Arleigh Burke class DDGs – each armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles for offensive missions and an arsenal of air-defense missiles for multi-layer defense.

Two additional Arleigh Burke class DDGs are deployed in Strait of Hormuz. Besides surface combatants, an unknown number of Ohio class SSGNs –equipped with a formidable payload of 154 land attack Tomahawk cruise missiles – are also patrolling in the area.

In theory, this naval armada is an instrument of coercion at sea, capable of projecting power against Iran and establishing local sea-control in the Arabian Sea. The employment of force through the maritime domain against various types of targets including: military targets like air-defense systems, nuclear enrichment facilities, and missile sites; high visibility targets like economic infrastructure; and high value targets like Iran’s political leadership itself, complicate Iran’s defensive measures as US Navy can launch from multiple vectors and over vast oceanic distances.

Any Iranian retaliation will mirror this logic. In a low-level response, Tehran has in the past attempted assertive signaling in the maritime domain, i.e., harassing merchant shipping and conducting naval exercises with Russian and Chinese partners.

A mid-level escalation includes counterstrikes on military assets of US and its allies in the Gulf. Facing an existential threat Iran is attempting maritime escalation, such as closing the Strait of Hormuz. Such a move represents a strategic gamble with global consequences and risks overwhelming US retaliation.

Iran, for its part, understands this asymmetry well. Iranian Navy, with obsolete surface and sub-surface fleet, stands no chance against US Navy in a traditional conflict. However, Iran has structured its naval strategy on sea denial rather than sea control. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGC-N) operates hundreds of fast-attack crafts (FACs) equipped with missiles and rockets for saturated strikes against surface vessels. In addition, hundreds of coastal missiles and suicide drones have been dispersed and concealed along the Iranian coast.

Additionally, Iran has commissioned rudimentary specialized vessels, like Shahid Bagheri, Shahid Roudaki and Shahid Mahdavi, which have the capability to launch swarms of drones and containerized missiles at floating targets. Together, these assets manifest Iran’s asymmetrical warfare strategy in the maritime domain through which it seeks to overcome US defenses through overwhelming numbers.

Geography facilitates Iran’s strategy. The Strait of Hormuz remains Tehran’s most potent political leverage. At its narrowest point between the Omani Musandam Peninsula and Iran, merely 33 kms wide with the shipping lane just 3 kms wide in either direction. Iran’s ability to block this channel using coastal missile batteries, FACs, naval mines, midget submarines, and unmanned systems provide its greatest capability to counter any major aggression.

The US understands this very well. Therefore, instead of venturing in close waters, the US Navy is likely to operate mostly outside the Persian Gulf while relying on Over-The-Horizon (OTH) precision strikes using distance as a buffer.

A blockade of Strait of Hormuz, by Iran will have immediate ramifications at the global scale. Oil tankers carry more than 17 million barrels of oil each day through this strait which accounts for approximately 20% of global net oil consumption.  Saudi Arabia and UAE have alterative pipelines operational which can transit about 2.6 million barrels per day. However, compared to the net volume passing through Start of Hormuz, these pipelines can carry 15.29% at maximum capacity and cannot overcome the economic spillover of any disruption at the Strait of Hormuz.

Yet, for Iran this leverage of Strait of Hormuz is fragile and unsustainable in longer run. Israel’s comprehensive air-campaign against Iranian high value assets and subsequent Operations Epic Fury and Midnight Hammer have already exposed major capability voids in Iranian air-defense capability. The Iranian Air Force is obsolete, and its air-defense systems – including domestic as well as Russian and Chinese systems – are mediocre at best.

Against a well-coordinated multi-domain offense, Iran lacks a credible and workable retaliatory option at its disposal. Yes, a large stockpile of short-range ballistic missiles and drones pose a threat, but again, Israel’s precise targeting of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers during Iran-Israel conflict indicates that US can also undertake a similar campaign at a much greater scale employing far more robust options.

But the central question remains: what is Washington’s endgame with Iran? Can limited air strikes realistically cripple the Iranian political regime or permanently degrade its nuclear ambitions, or are they more likely to reinforce the regime’s ideological narrative and deepen Tehran’s perceived necessity for a nuclear deterrent? There are no clear answers.

Mr. Ahmad Ibrahim is research associate at Maritime Centre of Excellence (MCE), Pakistan Navy War College (PNWC), Lahore. His areas of research include Modern Warfare, Military Technology, Conflict Studies, and Nuclear Strategy. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

CARRIER, CHOKEPOINT, AND COERCION: THE DYNAMICS OF IRAN-US CONFLICT was originally published on Global Security Review.

The existing US-led hub-and-spoke alliance system in the Asia-Pacific is fundamentally different than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In the 1950s the US investigated the possibility of establishing a regional multilateral alliance, but this soon proved infeasible. Unable to forge a Northeast Asian equivalent to NATO at the onset of the Cold War, the US opted instead for the “hub-and-spoke” architecture, where the spokes radiate out from Washington in a network of asymmetrical ties reinforcing American regional dominance. Why?

First, compared to Europe, the Asia-Pacific has very little history of multilateral institutions and alliance formation. Modern European states have a history of doing so dating back well before the Treaty of Westphalia was established in 1648. European sovereign political systems emerged out of Westphalia; Europe came to develop different notions of international community and international order, based, in part, on the concept of international law. Asia did not have such a tradition of legalistic international agreements.

Second, geography also plays a significant role in the nature of warfare, and therefore the ability of countries to come to one another’s aid. European nations border each other, but they do so in a land context. As such, not only is it easier to move around troops and military equipment, but it is faster.

The nature of geography and distance also inform countries’ threat perceptions. NATO continues to endure because of a shared common adversary—Russia. Countries neighbor each other, making for an easily delineated bloc. The distances between Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia are formidable compared to Europe. Moreover, the sheer size of China, and the formidable military power of Japan, made it harder for smaller competitors to balance against them.

There were some attempts at bridging East and West. In 1954, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) was established because of the Southeast Asia Collective Defence Treaty. It included Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the US and was designed to curb the spread of communism in Asia. A major reason SEATO failed and was disbanded in 1977 was because there was a lack of a common threat perception.

What did survive was the U.S. hub-and-spoke system: the US-Japan alliance as a means of curbing any potential regional Japanese aggression after World War II, the US- South Korea alliance to protect South Korea from a North Korean invasion, and the US alliance with Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS) to protect both nations from perceived threats of communist invasion by China and Indonesia.

Central and critical to the credibility of any alliance system is how it deters conflict. This is arguably much harder to achieve in a multilateral alliance than in the current hub-and-spoke system. Conventional deterrence in the Asian maritime theater is difficult. The most significant work on conventional deterrence was done by John Mearsheimer. However, Mearsheimer’s analysis may be persuasive for eras preceding the development of nuclear weapons, but the pre-nuclear era did not involve missiles. His analysis was based on a European land context, not an Asian maritime context. As such, thinking on conventional deterrence is incomplete.

There are significant logistical challenges that come with trying to establish a multilateral alliance system in Asia. Tasks include the need to ensure the prompt replenishment of destroyed combat ships, establish defensive perimeters for fleet support, and ensure the safety of fleet replenishment oilers and dry cargo/ammunition supply ships, just to name a few.

Budget constraints brought on by sequestration (2013), coupled with longer-term financial uncertainty, was raising questions about the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command and its combat logistics force more than a decade ago. Europe was, and remains, one single geostrategic entity connected by an excellent road network. In the Asia-Pacific, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are more dispersed, with neutral and non-aligned states between them, not to mention a growing Chinese submarine fleet.

American forces need to move around large numbers of ships, aircraft, troops, and munitions. Unless the US establishes more permanent bases on allied territory, it is not clear that the US is able to adequately deploy replacement capabilities on very short notice, especially once conflict breaks out. Whilst American declaratory policy that requires a defense of allies in Asia is sound, it needs to be backed up by raw capability, the two components of deterrence.

For more than a decade, analysts have encouraged the US to improve readiness and sustainment of the US Navy. In 2014, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments warned of many more similar issues, including how quickly cruisers and destroyers exhaust their missiles and how adversaries will attempt to use “cheap” missiles (such as the BrahMos cruise missile) to attack US warships to get them to use their most effective defenses first,  such as the long-range SM-6 missile, and then strike with more effective weapons to destroy carriers and their escorts.

The foundation of power projection was and remains sea control. As Hugh White argues, what has contributed to making the US such a decisive power in the region is a robust sea-control capacity with low risk, and therefore little cost. The modern concept of sea control has its origins in the writings of Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan. Sea control was about naval superiority, the concentration of forces, and decisive battles.

Sea control is the condition in which one has freedom of action in specified areas and for specified periods of time and, where necessary, to deny or limit its use to the enemy. Sea control is different from sea denial. The latter refers to attempts to deny an adversary’s ability to use the sea without necessarily seeking to control the sea. When it comes to Asia, China and the United States are gradually trading places when it comes to sea control.

Discussions about a multilateral alliance would arguably have to address the unavoidable question of nuclear weapons and extended nuclear deterrence (END). Discussions within NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group during the Cold War about targeting and basing helped calm nervous allies, helped hold NATO together, and, in some cases, helped stem the tide of proliferation.

Both the US–Republic of Korea Extended Deterrence Policy Committee (EDPC) and the US–Japan Extended Deterrence Dialogue were established after the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review for a similar purpose. There were growing concerns around the ability of the US to overcome China’s anti-access/area-denial capabilities and American support in the event of specific contingencies involving the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Could these bilateral dialogues become multilateral fora? This applies just as much to conventional weapons, but where the members of the alliance are far apart from each other, the potential red lines of escalation and conflict are much less identifiable than they would be in a land context.

But the technical challenges in the credibility of American extended deterrence to Australia, Japan, and South Korea matter less than the reasons why the US would want to do nuclear strategy again, this time in East Asia, a vastly more complicated theater. What matters is interest.

Hugh White raised the uncomfortable but critical issue when he suggested that Tokyo’s desire for a closer defense relationship with Australia is all about lining Australia up to support Japan against China, and that is the way Washington and Beijing will see it, too. Tokyo and Washington believe that Australia should defend the US-led international order and refuse concessions to China’s ambitions. Australians have not decided whether they agree with the US and Japan and are predisposed to seek a compromise with China—all while retaining a strong American role.

As White argued, no possible US nuclear posture, even the best possible, would eliminate the risk that a conflict with a nuclear-armed great power like China might lead to direct nuclear attacks on US territory. This leaves America’s East Asian allies to ponder whether American interests in the Western Pacific are strong enough for Washington to justify running the risk of conflict going nuclear.

Professor Paul Bracken of Yale University expressed concerns about American alliances in Asia. He found it nearly inconceivable that the US would actually use nuclear weapons to defend Australia, Japan, or Taiwan. Bracken noted that he played out countless scenarios, and that when it came down to it, American leaders were unwilling to use nuclear weapons. Bracken went so far as to suggest that the United States may not engage in a conventional hi-tech war with China, either.

Ely Ratner’s article is thought-provoking, valuable, and timely. But there are significant challenges in alliance credibility in Asia, because interests do not align as easily as they do in Europe. As former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles remarked in 1952, “The North Atlantic Treaty reflected a sense of common destiny as between the peoples of the west, which grew out of a community of race, religion, and political institutions, before it was finalised. But that element does not clearly exist as yet anywhere in the Pacific area.” The same is true today, seven decades later.

Christine Leah, PhD, is a fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.  

American Alliances in East Asia: An Australian Perspective was originally published on Global Security Review.