Mitchell Prothero
Asthe security situation in the Persian Gulf continues to deteriorate in the aftermath of Sunday’s cruise missile attacks on Saudi oil facilities, the Trump administration finds itself in an increasingly dire situation — and its apparently dysfunctional relationship with both Iran and Saudi Arabia appears to be to blame.
The attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities early Sunday morning, apparently carried out by Iran and its regional allies, highlights the terrible strategic position faced by the Trump administration in confronting Iran militarily in its own neighborhood.
Iran denies launching the attacks, pointing out that the Houthi militants in Yemen have claimed ownership of the strike. Yet Iran and the Houthi are close allies, and the weapons appear to have been supplied by Iran. Assuming Tehran is indeed behind the strike, which knocked about 5% of the world’s oil production offline for a yet undetermined amount of time, it confirmed what military experts have long suspected: Despite billions in U.S. arms sales and training arrangements, the Saudi military is as incapable of protecting its own oil infrastructure as it is defeating the Iran-backed Houthi militants that control vast swaths of Yemen. And for the U.S., that means the billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia have yet to produce a military that can stand on its own.
Iran and its allies have made a bold statement with the attack, conducted with cheap drones and knock-off Chinese cruise missiles: Any direct military conflict between Iran and the U.S. or its allies in the Persian Gulf would come at an enormous economic cost to the worldwide economy.
The attack follows a months-long pattern of hostility between the U.S. and Iran. Since tearing up President Obama’s nuclear treaty with Tehran, President Trump has inched closer to all-out conflict with Tehran. And with Iran’s declaration that it would no longer adhere to the 2015 nuclear treaty that the Trump administration broke, as well as repeated incidents involving oil tankers in the gulf, tensions seem to be increasing.
Even if the U.S. retaliates with limited strikes against Iranian targets in the coming days, Iran’s already made clear that it, along with its network of allies, is fully capable of causing more economic harm than the U.S. — already facing an economic slowdown — can possibly stand.
“This is exactly the sort of conflict the Iranians have been specifically preparing for decades.”
“Sure, the U.S. can inflict wild damage on the Iranians with a sustained air campaign against its military,” says a NATO military liaison recently posted to their country’s embassy in Riyadh. “But, after 30 years of military sanctions, the Iranians have long ago quit trying to compete with large amounts of conventional weapons in favor of light, cheap easily replaceable drones and missile systems that will flood the region, hitting economic, military, and political targets.” Those targets, according to the NATO liaison, include cities, military bases, and oil facilities.
The NATO liaison, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is skeptical that the U.S. military is capable of protecting these critical regional targets from swarms of missiles, rockets, and drones launched by Iran and its allies.
“The U.S. would need an all-out mobilization to even have a chance to contain attacks on their own facilities. That’s something I can’t see them doing, and even if they did, I have a hard time imagining it would work in the short term,” they say. “This is exactly the sort of conflict the Iranians have been specifically preparing for decades. They’ll get to fight it at home, with an enormous coastline and very well-trained proxies.”
The chances of stopping Iranian attacks would be even harder considering the lack of faith military analysts around the world has in America’s Gulf allies’ militaries.
“They’re all useless compared to us and we would have our hands full,” says an ex-Israeli military officer who now consults with the Israeli government on Iran’s military.
The Israeli officer points to his own country’s confrontation in 2006 with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that dominates Lebanon, as a warning of Iran and its proxies’ capabilities.
“Look at our performance against Hezbollah,” says the former Israeli officer. “They were able to keep throwing rockets at our targets for 30 days, and their ability to maneuver and fight on the ground was never obviously degraded on a large scale: Now it’s 13 years later and Iran will have much higher capabilities than Hezbollah did.”
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to make peace with Iran. But Sunday’s attack might have ruined his oft-stated hope to meet Iranian President Hasan Rouhani at the U.N. General Assembly later this month, and likely put to bed any chance of diplomacy any time soon.
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