Indian Strategic Studies: Evolving Threats and Strategic Partnerships in the Gulf

Published on Center for Strategic and International Studies (http://csis.org)

Apr 30, 2014Experts & Authors

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The current US and P5+1 negotiations with Iran may or may not remove nuclear weapons as a major new threat in the Gulf. Nuclear weapons, however, are only one aspect of the threats that affect US allies in the region. The full range of threats includes the following seven major categories of strategic challenges to the US strategic partnership with its Gulf allies:

Internal stability: The internal tensions and instability within each GCC state are a threat that each Gulf state must address largely on a national basis. Economic growth, distribution of wealth, demographic pressures and major problems in employing young men and women, the role of foreign labor, the impact of social change and hyper-urbanization, and the role of religion and religious extremism within the state are very real issues that compete for resources with military forces.

Violent Islamist and other extremist groups and terrorism: Each GCC state must assume primary responsibility for dealing with violent extremism and terrorism. However all benefit – as do the US and other external allies – from intelligence cooperation, common training in counterterrorism, cooperation in border security, expert outside advisory groups, and emergency deployment of outside security forces are increasingly critical areas of security cooperation and have led to massive increase in the size and spending on paramilitary and internal security forces since 2003. The civil conflict in Yemen, the civil war in Syria, sectarian and ethnic conflict in Iraq, and the broader tensions between Sunni and Shi’ite and mainstream Islam and extremists are all areas where security cooperation has become steadily more important.

The “Shi’ite Crescent” and Iranian black and covert operations: While some reporting exaggerates the threat, Iran has steadily attempted to increase its security role in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza and has used its Al Quds force and MOIS to provide at least some support to Shi’ite movements in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. There is also some evidence of planning for sabotage operations. These operations not only increase the incentive for cooperation with the GCC states and with the US, Britain, and France, but help create regional tensions that also breed Sunni extremism and violent opposition movements that impact GCC security.

The Iran asymmetric sea-missile-air build-up in the Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and Arabian Sea: As the following Figures show, Iran has built-up a major and growing capability to threaten the flow of shipping and petroleum exports through the Gulf and in the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea. This includes a wide range of patrol craft, mine warfare capabilities, submersibles, submarines, and land-air-sea-based anti-ship missiles. It also includes Revolutionary Guard and other forces that can attack offshore facilities in the Gulf, and raid or attack coastal facilities and targets.

Iranian conventional land, naval, and air forces: The following Figures also show that Iran has never fully recovered from the massive losses of combat equipment it suffered during the final battles of the Iran-Iraq war, and the losses its navy suffered during its “tanker war” with the United State in 1987-1988. It has also suffered since 1980 from an inability to import the parts for its Western supplied aircraft, land weapons and ship and major modernization programs. It has only had limited imports of advanced weapons from Russia, and most of its claims to producing advanced areas have resulted in very limited production of systems where Iran has often grossly exaggerated their effectiveness. The Figures show that GCC states have a massive lead in air and surface-to-air systems; more advanced command, control and communications and intelligence systems; more modern combat ships, and more modern land force systems which is massively reinforced by US, British, and French power projection capabilities. Iran’s advantage in land force weapons numbers is limited by their quality and Iran’s lack of ability to carry out sustained maneuvers and air cover/air defense for its land forces.

Iranian artillery rocket and ballistic missile forces: Iran has built up a growing force of longer-range ballistic missiles that can strike at any target in the GCC and neighboring states, as well as a massive force of shorter-range artillery rockets and ballistic missiles that can hit targets in the coastal areas across the Gulf. At present, these rockets and missiles lack the accuracy and lethality to hit critical military and infrastructure target like desalination plants, but Iran is seeking to give them far more accuracy and terminal guidance capability as well as to develop UCAVs and cruise missiles. They would also radically change their lethality if equipped with nuclear warheads, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported as early as November 2011 that there were indications Iran was developing such warheads.

Iranian weapons of mass destruction: Iran is a declared chemical weapons state and it is unclear that it has destroyed its stockpiles of weapons and precursors and capability to produce such weapons. Iran has the technology and production capability to make biological weapons but no source indicate it has done so. Iran has clearly reached the point of becoming a nuclear threshold state, and has shown that it could produce fissile uranium while the design of its heavy water reactor at Arak could give it the ability to produce fissile plutonium. Reporting by the IAEA has raised serious questions about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons design information, neutron initiators, development of the explosive lenses for implosion weapons, machining of uranium, possible non-fissile testing of nuclear weapons designs at a facility at Parchin, and other weapons related activities. P5+1 negotiations with Iran may halt any further weapons development, but seem unlikely to roll back any of its current capabilities or prevent all further weapons development efforts.

The Burke Chair at CSIS has developed a new briefing that looks at the military developments and balances that affect all of these threats, and which draws upon important contributions by Dr. Abdullah Toukan, and research work by Garrett Berntsen and Tyler Duhame. It is entitled Evolving Threats and Strategic Partnership in the Gulf, and is available on the CSIS web site athttp://csis.org/files/publication/Evolving%20Threats%20in%20the%20Gulf%20-%20Final%20%28min%20size%29%2030.4.14.pdf [2].

This briefing covers the key factors that sustain the US strategic partnership with its Gulf allies, the level of US commitment to the Gulf and US power projection capabilities and resources, the level of modernization and force expansion affecting the GCC states, the importance of internal stability in the Gulf, and the overall structure of Iran’s politico-military efforts. It focuses in detail on four major aspects of the military balance:

Asymmetric warfare capabilities.

Conventional warfare capabilities.

Missile warfare capabilities.

Iran’s nuclear programs.

US preventive strike capabilities, and

Israel preventive strike capabilities.

This is a work in progress and will be steadily up dated in the future. Please address comments and suggestions to Anthony H. Cordesman at acordesman@gmail.com [3].

Other major research focused on the threats in the Gulf, Gulf states, and the US role in the region include:

• Improving the US-GCC Security Partnership: Planning for the Future, available on the CSIS web site at http://csis.org/publication/improving-us-gcc-security-partnership-planning-future [4].

• Iran and the Gulf Military Balance - I: Conventional and Asymmetric Forces, available on the CSIS web site at http://csis.org/publication/reassessing-gulf-military-balance-part-one-conventional-and-asymmetric-forces [5].

• Iran and the Gulf Military Balance II: The Missile and Nuclear Dimensions, available on the CSIS web site at http://csis.org/publication/iran-and-gulf-military-balance-ii-missile-and-nuclear-dimensions [6].

• Iran and the Gulf Military Balance III: Sanctions, Energy Arms Control, and Regime Change, available on the CSIS web site athttp://csis.org/files/publication/130625_iransanctions.pdf [7]

• Iran and the Gulf Military Balance IIV: The Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, available on the CSIS web site athttp://csis.org/files/publication/120228_Iran_Ch_VI_Gulf_State.pdf [8]

• Violence in Iraq, available on the CSIS web site at https://csis.org/files/publication/120718_Iraq_US_Withdrawal_Search_SecStab.pdf [9]

Indian Strategic Studies

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2 May 2014

Evolving Threats and Strategic Partnerships in the Gulf

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