Iran's Navy Threatens the Security of the Persian Gulf
Tehran's New Plan to Dominate its Region -- and Beyond
Article Summary and Author Biography
The possibility of Tehran developing a nuclear weapon at some point poses a potential future threat to the international order. A real threat, however, has already materialized: Iran's fast-growing navy.
W. JONATHAN RUE is Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. A former active duty Marine officer, he served in Iraq from 2009–2010.
Response
How would the Israeli defense establishment respond if Iran went nuclear? Is Washington focusing too much on military containment at the expense of political containment? And is a grand bargain with Tehran possible?
While much of the world's attention focuses on Iran's nuclear program, Tehran has made considerable progress on another security front in recent years -- steadily increasing the reach and lethality of its naval forces. The goal by 2025, if all goes as the country has planned, is to have a navy that can deploy anywhere within a strategic triangle from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea to the Strait of Malacca.
Should such plans materialize -- and Iran is making steady progress -- Tehran would redraw the strategic calculus of an already volatile region. The Persian Gulf is home to some of the world's most valuable supply lines, routes that are vital to the global energy supply. In the last few years, Iran has invested heavily in a domestic defense industry that now has the ability to produce large-scale warships, submarines, and missiles.
Since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, Iran has largely pursued a strategy of deterrence. Its ground forces, which number roughly 450,000, are trained and equipped to fight a prolonged, asymmetric defensive battle on its own territory. Likewise, Iran's air force can protect high value domestic targets such as the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and numerous military and political headquarters inside Tehran; it is incapable of long-range strike missions abroad. Iran simply does not possess the capability to project hard power into neighboring states.
But Iran's navy is different. It is the best organized, best trained, and best equipped service of the country's conventional military establishment. More than a nuclear weapons program, which would likely function as a passive deterrent, Iran's navy is an active component of Iran's activist foreign policy. The country's leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly said that Iran's navy is the critical foundation on which its long-term development and prosperity rests.
The United States now has to contend with Iranian ships well outside the Persian Gulf. This could force the U.S. Navy to ramp up in an area once considered secure.
Iran actually has two navies -- the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN) and the vaunted Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN). The responsibilities of both have been expanding since 2007. The IRIN operates conventional surface and subsurface platforms and fulfills a more traditional naval role. It is now responsible for the Caspian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the blue waters outside the Persian Gulf. The IRGCN, which executes asymmetric operations with swarms of small boats that overwhelm the defenses of larger ships, has been tasked with defending the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. This reorganization reflects Tehran's desire to be a naval power that can deploy and operate well outside Persian Gulf waters (via the IRIN) while still retaining formidable coastal defenses in the Persian Gulf (via the IRGCN).
Evidence of Iran's growing naval assertiveness is already on display. In December 2010, Iran participated in a training exercise with Djibouti during a port call there. Tehran sailed away from that engagement with a partnership agreement that could allow Iran to use Djibouti as a logistical base supporting a larger and persistent Iranian presence in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Two months later, for the first time since 1979, Iran sent two ships through the Suez Canal to the Eastern Mediterranean, inducing the ire of both Israel and the United States. Neither country retaliated, but Israel closely tracked the ships as they sailed along the Israeli coast. This summer, Iran sent one of its Kilo class submarines to the Red Sea on a counter-piracy operation. Finally, Iran recently asserted plans to send naval patrols to the Western Atlantic. Although Iran probably doesn't have the capacity for such a mission, this kind of rhetoric speaks to Tehran's grand ambitions and is a way of emphasizing what it sees as the illegitimacy of the U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf.
On numerous occasions in recent years, IRGCN small boats have come dangerously close to U.S. and Western naval ships operating in the Persian Gulf. By all accounts, this is not an abnormal occurrence and usually ends with the small boat being turned away. But a recent change has increased the danger of escalation. Since 2005, Iran has been decentralizing command and control, not requiring subordinate commanders to get approval for all actions from senior leaders in Tehran. Thus, an IRGCN boat commander was able to take the initiative and capture a small crew of British sailors in 2007, a tactical action with strategic consequences. Should the IRGCN become more assertive, such engagements could spiral out of control.
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