President Trump may have simplified a complex issue, but the Navy will understand his directive as issued on Wednesday.
I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2020
That message has predictably sent Twitter into overdrive. Trump’s critics suggest he wants to distract the nation from his handling of the coronavirus. Former Obama administration official Tommy Vietor, always a reliably useless voice on military issues, implied that Trump is authorizing the Navy to start a conflict.
That’s not what this is about.
Rather, Trump’s prudent directive is about giving Navy commanders the clarity they need to defend themselves with confidence. While they have that standing authority, Trump’s order gives commanders greater latitude to act where they perceive a threat to their personnel. It’s a judgment call appropriate to a situation where Iran is actively escalating against American interests in and around the Persian Gulf.
But Trump’s order also matters in the sense that dealing with Iranian warships always comes with a heavy political context. And considering that the Navy is happy to trash the career of commanding officers if they are seen to create a political complication, there is a risk that those commanders might hold back from using force to defend their crews. This has happened on occasion, notably with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s detention of American sailors back in 2016.
The IRGC is the physical martial embodiment of Iran’s Khomeinist ideology. And at the center of that ideology is the theological understanding of ordained sacrifice in advance of the Islamic revolution. While Iranian martyrdom operations place a less central role in the regime’s planning than in the 1980s, there is no question that Tehran would be willing to sacrifice IRGC personnel if it believed that sacrifice served an objective.
This is partly why Iran has invested in swarming tactics involving dozens of small speed boats simultaneously attacking one or more larger American warships. The Iranians know that if just one of those boats is loaded with explosives, it might be able to destroy a larger vessel. This is why the Iranians harass American ships by traveling very close to them and then darting away. They want to send a “what if we’re loaded with explosives” message to the American crews. And they know that their antics give those crews only seconds to make a decision as to whether to hold or open fire.
Trump’s order thus does something quite simple but necessary. It ensures commanders have the flexible authority to do what they need to in order to protect their ships, personnel, and country.
