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This must stop. CENTCOM gets I&W of Iranian malfeasance & pulls the same page from the old "restore deterrence" playbook w/ a huge request for forces - carrier strike group, bomber task force, fighter squadron, etc. Totally reactive, burning readiness. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/10/us-military-potential-iranian-attack-444313 1/x
CAVEAT: CENTCOM should take Iranian threats seriously. High alert is warranted. But flowing a bunch of conventional forces into theater is not an effective or sustainable way to deter Iran's unconventional and asymmetric provocations. 2/x
The Iranians are fully aware of US capabilities. They have watched the US flow in bombers, fighters, and ships into theater at will for years. It is baked into their strategic calculus, and doing the same thing all over again doesn't change that. Take carriers... 3/x
The Iranians conducted both the strike on Saudi oil fields and the rocket attacks on US forces in Iraq with a US aircraft carrier present in the region. So CENTCOM's explanation that conventional forces like these enhance deterrence is demonstrably false. 4/x
Iran knows this, and so do our regional partners. So not only do large US force flows fail to enhance deterrence, they do little to nothing to reassure our partners. 5/x
Here's the big difference between how we should be approaching Iran/CENTCOM and how we should approach China/INDOPACOM and Russia/EUCOM: TIME. 6/x
Time is on our side when it comes to Iran. They know that in a shooting war, the US will take its time, build the iron mountain, impose massive costs, and there will be little that they can do about it. Flowing additional forces into theater does not alter this reality. 7/x
Time is NOT on our side when it comes to China & Russia. Both could plausibly exploit temporal advantage (h/t @C_M_Dougherty) to achieve a fait accompli that would be impossible to stop or even roll back. More US forces forward inserts risk & uncertainty into their calculus. 8/x
That is why forward presence, flexible deterrent options, dynamic force employment, etc. are of greater value in INDOPACOM/EUCOM vs. CENTCOM. In these theaters, they directly challenge the adversary's theory of victory, which rests on time. In CENTCOM, they're just redundant. 9/x
It's not that additional forces will never be required in CENTCOM, or can't enhance deterrence. For example, additional ISR assets might have a deterrent effect by decreasing Iran's confidence to conduct deniable attacks without attribution. 10/x
However, given that CENTCOM already consumes the vast majority of DOD's air-breathing ISR, OSD and the JS should put pressure on CENTCOM to better manage its assigned/allocated ISR assets to counter the threat of deniable attacks from Iran. 11/x
So what does it matter that CENTCOM asks for more forces every time tensions peak with Iran? It's a massive drain on readiness with long-lasting effects. Patriot readiness was swallowed by the desert. Look what's happening to the carrier fleet now: https://news.usni.org/2020/11/12/no-margin-left-overworked-carrier-force-struggles-to-maintain-deployments-after-decades-of-overuse 12/x
Every CSG, bomber task force, fighter squadron, Patriot battery, etc. that goes to CENTCOM to gild the lily of US escalation dominance vs. Iran isn't going to INDOPACOM or EUCOM to repair the strained credibility of US deterrence vs. China and Russia. This is zero sum. 13/x
OSD/JS need to say NO more often when CENTCOM comes to the table with more requests for forces. The burden needs to be on CENTCOM to develop a more effective and sustainable approach to deterring Iran with a focus on how to counter its unconventional/asymmetric efforts. 14/x
Repeatedly flowing in large numbers of high-end conventional forces to the Middle East cannot be the answer. It doesn't work, and even if it worked on occasion, it's not sustainable in an era where we need to preserve ready forces for INDOPACOM and EUCOM. END/x
