Lost amid the news of the coronavirus relief deal, Britain’s variant strain of the coronavirus, and President Trump’s election disputes, military tensions between the United States and Iran are rising rapidly.
On Sunday, an Iran-supported militia launched rockets at the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraq. No Americans were harmed, but an Iraqi soldier was wounded. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quickly attributed the attack to Iranian-controlled militias. The top culprit is a somewhat deniable subset of the Kata’ib Hezbollah organization, Iran’s primary military proxy in Iraq.
More interestingly, on Monday, a U.S. Navy cruise missile submarine, the USS Georgia, and two missile destroyers transited through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea. The Navy’s public announcement of the transit (the cover photo to this article is a Navy release of the transit) is noteworthy for two reasons.
First, the Pentagon’s Central Command, responsible for Iran-related military operations, knows that the Iranian military command is aware that the USS Georgia poses a special threat to its interests. That’s because the Georgia can now operate with effective impunity against Iran, especially if, as we now know it is, the submarine is operating in a quick alert patrol posture in the Arabian Sea. The tactical specifics matter here. Assuming that the Georgia is operating about 100 miles or more off the Iranian coast, it could rise to launch depth and fire its Tomahawk missiles at any land target across Iran. By the time Iran then scrambled any of its most responsive military assets, of which it has few, to the area where the Tomahawks were first detected on radar, assuming they were detected at all, the Georgia could be at least 100 miles away in any direction and depth. When one considers that the Georgia is equipped with updated Tomahawk missiles, capable of loitering after launch, the submarine poses a threat Iran simply cannot contest. The timing of this announcement matters. The Georgia would be far more vulnerable to Iran were it still operating in the shallow, tight waters of the Persian Gulf, which is why it only surfaced just before transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
It’s a clear message to Tehran, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps in particular: Attack U.S. interests at your peril. And it follows a recent and very public training operation in which B-52 bombers flew from their U.S. bases to the Mediterranean Sea. The intent was to show the Pentagon’s means of rapidly deploying strike assets in the event of a crisis.
Still, what’s really informing this escalated U.S. military activity isn’t so much the traditional Iranian antics such as the rocket strike on Sunday. It’s the intelligence reporting that suggests Iran wants to give the Trump administration a bloody nose before it leaves office. Iran’s desire for action is informed both by the crippling sanctions the Trump administration has imposed on it but also by action such as the January 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani. The recent Israeli assassination of Iran’s top nuclear weapons scientist has exacerbated the Tehran hardliners’ interest in lashing out lest they appear weak. But the threat won’t end on Jan. 20. Tehran is likely to gamble that the Biden administration will tolerate its increasing malevolent activity out of desperation to restore a semblance of Iranian compliance with the 2015 JCPOA nuclear accord. These concerns should not be underestimated. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s now fetishlike focus on avenging Soleimani is informing the post-administration security plans for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for example.
Buckle up.
