It’s that time of the year. The U.S. is rotating its carriers based in the Persian Gulf, and the media automatically assumes this represents an “escalation of force” as the number of carriers in the region increases. Breathless reporting in the media sensationally mentions there are now three carriers inside the Gulf, and how this is a strong message to the Iranian government.
(July 6, 2007) The USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) transits
through the Atlantic Ocean. It will arrive in the Gulf by fall.
But the Iranian government has nothing to fear. The Iranians should start sweating when the U.S. Navy begins to pull all of its carriers back from the Persian Gulf, not when it sends more in. This, in fact, would be the signal that the U.S. is prepared to attack. The geography dictates this. The carriers have far less room to maneuver while stationed in the Gulf, and are far more susceptible to the array of Iran’s coastal missile batteries. While the U.S. is confident it can defeat Iran’s anti-ship missiles, there is no such thing as certainty. Just ask the Israelis after they lost a warship in an attack by an Iranian-manned C-802 anti-ship cruise missile, which is an Iranian-made variant of the Chinese Silkworm, during the Israel-Hezbollah War last summer. U.S. aircraft carriers are capital ships–a $9 Billion dollar plus investment when fully-loaded, not to mention the thousands of sailors and Marines stationed on board. The U.S. Navy wouldn’t risk leaving multiple carriers in the Gulf if it decided to launch a full fledged operation against Iran’s nuclear program. Fighters and attack aircraft launched from the carrier decks can be refueled using carrier-based or ground-based aerial tankers. While this might have a marginal impact on effectiveness, it reduce the risk of losing a capital ship to almost zero. Finally, if the Iranians decided to block the Strait of Hormuz by, say, sinking a large tanker in the narrow channel, the U.S. Navy would have carriers trapped in the Gulf until the straits could be cleared. The Navy would be unlikely to risk one ship in the Gulf, let alone three.
