By Tom Rogan
Thursday, September 08, 2016
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) continues to
threaten the U.S. Navy. In recent weeks, the IRGC’s Naval component has
conducted numerous simulated swarm-attacks against U.S. Navy vessels in the
Persian Gulf. In each case, IRGC sailors have ignored radioed warnings from our
sailors.
It has to stop. That’s certainly the view of the
Pentagon. General Joseph L. Votel, the senior officer responsible for Persian
Gulf operations, recently warned Iran that the U.S. would “prevail” if a
skirmish occurred. Senior U.S. naval officers also regularly condemn the IRGC’s
behavior. Conversely, the silence from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is deafening.
Why? Fear of upsetting Iran. Just as that concern led President Obama to reject
arming Iraq’s Sunni tribes against ISIS — a.k.a. the Islamic State or Daesh —
the president is hoping he can ignore the IRGC into oblivion. But he’s wrong.
Because the problem here is not American pride, but rather the protection of
American personnel.
The Iranian revolutionaries — of which the IRGC are the
elite honor guard — have a long history of spilling American blood. And in
recent years, the IRGC’s navy has been buoyed by new capabilities specifically
designed to sink U.S. ships. As such, if IRGC leaders keep pushing without
riposte, they are likely to decide that they can strike the U.S. with minimal
cost. The IRGC-Navy’s commanding officer, Ali Fadavi, is a well-known attention
seeker, but he would not be in his position without a reputation for anti-American
purity.
Consider this hypothetical situation. A month from now,
the IRGC leadership directs a lieutenant to “go rogue” and crash an
explosives-laden ship into a U.S. vessel. If the U.S. Navy sinks the lieutenant
before he strikes, the IRGC would claim its sailor was murdered by an
outrageous act of American aggression. In the aftermath, the Chinese and
Russians would condemn the U.S. Navy, the Europeans would stay quiet, and the
White House would probably apologize. But if the lieutenant succeeded, the IRGC
would claim he was acting in self-defense. Or they’d claim he was overzealous
and acting independently. This may seem like a stretch of the imagination, but
it is not.
After all, the IRGC thrives on using “cutout” officers
and operations to give its senior leaders deniability. That’s how the IRGC
killed hundreds of U.S. military personnel in Iraq (Google “Iran EFP” or
“Karbala Raid 2007”), that’s how the IRGC kidnapped Westerners for prisoner
exchanges (Google “Peter Moore Khazali”), that’s how they plotted to blow up a
packed Washington, D.C., restaurant in 2011 (Google “Quds D.C. restaurant
plot”), and that’s how they are turning Iraq into a sectarian puppet state. IRGC
leaders are not as cutout-clever as they think, but because the U.S. very
rarely calls them on what we know they are directing, it doesn’t matter. If
IRGC leaders believe they can kill American sailors without incurring
significant retaliation, they will have no qualms about sending a few Iranian
sailors to their deaths in order to do so. The sailors would become heroes of
the Revolution; righteous heirs to the defining Shia martyr, Husayn ibn Ali,
and proven servants of Ayatollah Khomeini’s theological project.
Yet a bold posture of U.S. deterrence would work.
President Bush showed that in Iraq when he responded to escalating IRGC attacks
on U.S. personnel by authorizing U.S. Special Operations units to smash IRGC
networks. In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. has the capacity to send the IRGC
another efficient and effective message. First, the U.S. should send a
destroyer in proximity to one of the IRGC’s island bases near the Hormuz
Strait. That destroyer’s crew should act in conformity with maritime standard-operating
procedure, while asserting their right to freedom of navigation through
international waters. But if Iranian vessels close within 250 yards, the U.S.
crew should fire warning shots from their Phalanx weapons system. If the
Iranians keep closing, they should be destroyed. The U.S. crew should video the
incident. While the U.S. Navy has an array of weapons systems designed to
defeat small, high-speed threats (as this video of
the Phalanx in operation attests), the IRGC also knows that the U.S. has other
regional air and naval assets at its disposal — the Eisenhower Carrier Strike
Group, for one.
Additionally, it’s time for the U.S. to call in some
diplomatic favors. While President Obama’s credibility with U.S. regional
allies has been eviscerated by Bashar al-Assad’s post-red-line survival and his
never-ending chlorine-gas/forced-starvation/barrel-bomb genocide against the
Syrian people, General Votel could probably arrange for a flotilla of U.S.,
Asia-Pacific, and European warships to sail past the IRGC island bases. That
internationalist show of force would upset the IRGC for another reason: The
IRGC is banking on accessing European multi-billion-dollar business contracts
under the 2015 nuclear deal’s sanction relief (the IRGC controls significant elements
of Iran’s economy).
Of course, all of this is imperfect. If the U.S. had two
carrier groups in the region we would be in a stronger position. Still, it
speaks volumes that President Obama has not yet issued a sharp public statement
authorizing U.S. Navy commanders to proactively defend their crews. The IRGC
might not listen, but the current status — America’s commander-in-chief staying
quiet as the threat rises — is a signal of unambiguous weakness.
And that silence fuels the IRGC fire.
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