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Iran and the Changing Military Balance in the Gulf

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Iran and the Changing Military Balance in the Gulf 1616 Rhode Island Avenue NW Working draft, Washington, DC 20036 Please send comments Anthony H. Cordesman and suggested additions Phone: 1.202.775.3270 to Email: [email protected] [email protected] Iran and the Changing Web version: www.csis.org/burke/reports Military Balance in the Gulf Net Assessment Indicators Anthony H. Cordesman With the assistance of Grace Hwang March 26, 2019 Burke Chair Photo: -/ Getty Images In Strategy 1 Iran and the Changing Military Balance in the Gulf Three major changes are taking place in the military balance in the Arab/Persian Gulf. This e-book provides a net assessment of the Gulf military balance that focuses on each of these three major shifts: • First, the changing strategic relationship between Iran and its Arab neighbors and the uncertainty of the future U.S. role in the Gulf. • Second, Iran’s growing capabilities for asymmetric warfare in the Gulf area. • Third, the impact of Iran’s success in creating conventionally-armed, precision guided missiles and more effective air defenses. The assessment presents a mix of narratives, quantitative data, maps, and charts that addresses each aspect of these changes in the balance. It draws heavily on data provided by the reports from IISS and SIPRI, excerpts from official U.S. government sources like the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Energy Information Administration (EIA), as well as a wide range of work from other institutions, think tanks, and media sources. Setting the Stage: Clashes, U.S. Commitments, and Comparative Resources The analysis in this section of the assessment sets the stage by highlighting the dynamics of the growing crisis in U.S. and Iranian relations that have driven the steadily rising confrontation between Iran, the United States, and the Arab Gulf states. It then highlights a chronology of the patterns in the most recent tensions and clashes between Iran; the United States; and the Arab Gulf states, the current level of U.S. forces in the region, and the growing uncertainties in the U.S. commitments to the Gulf. The narratives, tables, and charts in this section highlight the impact of the varying different levels of resources available to Iran and its Arab neighbors and the scale of the arms race that has shaped the relative capability of Arab Gulf, Iranian, and U.S. forces over the last decade – including the relative military expenditures and the trends in arms imports of Iran and the Arab Gulf states. It should be noted that the Coronavirus may have a massive future impact on U.S. deployments and national security expenditures, Arab military expenditures and arms imports, and Iranian military expenditures and domestic military production. The United States saw a major rise in its future projected national debt and interest payments, driven by civil entitlements expenditures, even before the virus became an issue. It is now considering initial annual economic stimulus and recovery payments of $2,000 billion to pay for the impact of the virus – costs which compare with Department of Defense (DoD) estimates of the total cost of both the Afghan and Iraq-Syria wars as ranging from $2,002.4 billion to $2,106.2 billion between FY2001 and FY2019. The total costs of dealing with the impact of the virus may have a major impact on future U.S. spending in the Gulf region, on power projection forces, on aid, and all the other aspects of national security. Key national economies affecting the balance were already “failed states” with weak or nearly bankrupt economies even before the virus began to have an impact. These included Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. There currently is no way to estimate how serious the impact of the virus will be, and the United States has continued to place new economic sanctions on Iran. 2 As is shown later in this analysis, “oil wealth” is very limited in terms of per capita income in many of the Gulf states and the value of petroleum exports has varied sharply and unpredictably over time. This section warns that the wealthiest petroleum exporter in the Gulf – Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – are spending very high percentages of their GNP on national security – some close to 10% – as is at least one less wealthy state: Oman. The virus has already sharply cut demand for petroleum and petroleum prices. Sustained cuts could force even the wealthiest states to reduce national security spending, arms imports, and efforts to reform their economies and cut their dependence on petroleum exports. These trends are so uncertain, however, that any effort to estimate their impact now involves little more than speculative guesswork. Accordingly, the analysis that follows warns that it is not possible to estimate the detailed impact of the Coronavirus, but they are certain to be all too real. The First Key Shift in the Military Balance: Changes in in the Regional Struggle for Strategic Control and Influence The analysis then addresses the first major set of changes in the balance. These include the shifts in political and strategic alignments of the United States, the Arab Gulf states, and Iran – shifts that go far beyond the Gulf. These shifts reflect the impact of three major regional wars, a series of civil wars and political upheavals, and two decades of conflict with extremism and terrorism. These events have led to changes in the levels of national influence and the military balance that extend from Israel and the Levant to Yemen and the Red Sea. They also reflect the impact of the growing political-military struggle between Iran (and its supporters) and the United States and most Arab Gulf states, a growing emphasis on asymmetric and gray area conflicts, and major changes in the role of outside powers like Russia and Turkey. These changes have made Iraq the critical strategic prize in the struggle between Iran and the United States and its Arab strategic partners. At the same time, Iran has expanded its influence and its confrontations in the Gulf to now include Yemen, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea. It is also clear from the history of these shifts that Iran, the United States, and its Arab strategic partners have been reluctant to enter into another major war. Instead, it has been gray area operations and hybrid warfare, along with efforts to exert political struggle for influence, that have driven their efforts to gain regional control and influence – and wars of intimidation and lower-levels of violence have become an enduring part of the balance in the Gulf. The Second Key Shift in the Military Balance: The Rising Impact of Iran’s Asymmetric Forces The next section of the assessment addresses the second major set of changes in the balance. These are changes driven by Iran’s development of a broad range of asymmetric warfare capabilities in the Gulf and nearby waters in the Gulf of Oman, Indian Ocean, and Red Sea. This part of the assessment not only assesses the naval balance, it looks beyond the current focus on the Al Quds Force to include all of the asymmetric elements in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the regular Iranian military forces or Artesh, and other key parts of the Iranian government. It also uses maps and charts to highlight the fact that these forces are sometimes more important in terms of their ongoing political and strategic impact than their potential impact on large-scale war fighting. This is further illustrated by a graphic and map analysis of the critical strategic importance of the flow of petroleum and liquid natural gas exports. 3 This part of the assessment not only assesses the naval balance, it looks beyond the current focus on the Al Quds Force to include all of the asymmetric elements in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the regular Iranian military forces or Artesh, and other key parts of the Iranian government. It also uses maps and charts to highlight the fact that these forces are sometimes more important in terms of their ongoing political and strategic impact than their potential impact on large-scale war fighting. This is further illustrated by a graphic and map analysis of the critical strategic importance of the flow of petroleum and liquid natural gas exports. The analysis also puts the land force balance in a different perspective. All of the major powers involved have developed large land forces for nations of very different sizes. The geography and broader balance of joint warfare capabilities in the region do, however, sharply limit their capability to carry out sustained offensive and maneuver warfare outside their own territory, and invading and occupying either Iran or Saudi Arabia is scarcely likely to give the “victor” any meaningful form of victory. The Third Key Shift in the Military Balance: The Impact of Iran’s Missile Forces The final part of the assessment examines changes in the balance that have been driven by the impact of Iran’s growing missile and rocket warfare capabilities, as well as by the growth of Iran’s wide range of conventional, precision-strike capabilities. It shows how these changes affect the air and land-based air defense balance, as well as how they affect key shifts in the relative balance of Iranian and Gulf Arab deterrent and war fighting capabilities. It shows that these changes are interacting in ways that as of yet remain uncertain and difficult to predict, but that they may significantly improve Iran’s position relative to the U.S. position, that of its Arab strategic partners, and that of their coalition allies. At the same time, it highlights critical weaknesses in the open source literature and data involved that have produced critical gaps in the analysis of Iran’s capabilities.
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