This will be a short post, I try not to chase headlines but I find this significant enough to weigh in with a few thoughts on the recent Iran strikes and the perpetual headache that is US Central Command for anyone with an eye on the Pacific.
At this point, it feels like Admiral Paparo and INDOPACOM’s only option to deter Beijing will be to invade Tampa and overthrow CENTCOM.
In the past 18 months, Iran has fired thousands of missiles and drones at Israel and more than a few at US forces in the Middle East. Its proxies in Yemen have lobbed their fair share of munitions and drones into the Red Sea, keeping the US Navy on its toes but hardly producing real results. Post COVID and Soleimani strike, its clear the Iranian regime ain’t what it used to be. Because in addition to lobbing a bunch of high explosive across the region, most of its proxies and their leadership have been exploded by RadioShack parts. Years of sanctions have hobbled their military’s ability to maintain their machines and their allegedly capable Russian-supplied air defense have been neutered by the Israelis fairly easily. The Big Bad Wolf that every CENTCOM commander and cable news guest has screamed about and stolen Aircraft Carriers to TLAMs from INDOPACOM for the last decade is actually just like…a starved Coyote: feral, but hardly a real threat to your existence.
In its single-eyed pursuit of its greatest enemy in the Middle East, CENTCOM has greatly harmed broader US national security, our ability to deter the actual main enemy in the Pacific, and expended money and resources on a threat that turns out is more like Iraq in 2003 than Germany in 1939. And so now with the latest US strikes on Iran (battle damage assessment pending as of this writing), we wait and see if the Iranian nuclear regime has successfully been delayed another ten years and if the Iranians are going to throw whatever is left at us (which isn’t much). Most likely, we end up in a continuous low-level conflict environment that pops off every few months and that is dangerous enough and scary enough in CENTCOM PowerPoints to DC that we continue to bleed resources on the problem set. Meanwhile, the PLA grows stronger every day.
You shouldn’t shed a tear for a regime that has oppressed, tortured, disappeared, and murdered its own by the bushel, spread chaos and extremism throughout the Middle East, and killed hundreds of Americans with EFPs during the Iraq War. The Iranian regime is undoubtedly evil and independent of second and third order effects, I’d practically yawn at all of this. The concern here is not WWIII, despite what you may see on social media. The real concerns here are tangible security challenges and thorny constitutional issues. As I see it, there are five outstanding issues at hand here:
The Constitutionality of the strike and US war powers. I am not a lawyer (nor do I ever wish to be one), but I cannot see a reasonable justification through existing law for these strikes. This matters a lot at a time when many American institutions are crumbling. Who can direct use of force and when is a key underpinning of the rule of law both domestically and internationally. For years, we’ve stretched justification for actions around the world under GWOT-era authorities. Even the invasion of Iraq had an AUMF. I’ll leave the deeper analysis to the experts here. Will anyone care? Probably not.
Nuclear material in the wild. Supposedly the Iranians moved their centrifuges and enriched nuclear materials days ago (I haven’t seen confirm on this, only RUMINT. The BDA will let us know more). If that’s the case, well then this is simply a pause (albeit a significant one if the strikes are successful). Underground bunkers still take a lot of time to build. But how secure is this material, and is there any strategic interest from radicals in the regime in building a dirty bomb as revenge with the knowledge that actually building a real arsenal may never manifest?
Iranian sleeper cells in the Western World. Countless novels and think tank analysis have gone into the potential threat of Iran and its proxies inserting sleeper cells in the Western world lying in wait for war. There’s not much actual proof in the open source that this threat is manifest, particularly in the US, but yeah maybe avoid large crowds in major cities for a bit (just in case) until we get clarification from law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The continuous drag on US resources. Once again, we are burning valuable resources and munitions on a regime that is not the existential threat they have been made out to be. More worryingly, because we have no apparent desired end state (maybe Iran surrenders tomorrow and the regime becomes a democracy, but I seriously doubt it) we have no way to fight the CENTCOM resource beast. We will continue to throw assets at the Middle East because the problem isn’t just quite solved. I don’t think we get pulled into a regime change war. The administration is many things, but they seem remarkably uninterested in replicating the aftermath of Iraq 2003 (even if the buildup to these strikes resembles pre-invasion Iraq discourse). Bombing nuclear sites might seem an appealing policy option but troops on the ground don’t seem aligned with his beliefs or many of his advisors. One way or another, it is in US national security interests for the CENTCOM resource drag to end.
How the aftermath/success will impact administration views on intervening over Taiwan. If the strikes are successful in their ability to disable the Iranian nuclear program and in convincing the regime in Tehran to stop lobbing missiles and the like, the administration will likely be more encouraged to intervene over Taiwan…or at least threaten it. The problem is that the Iranian military and the PLA are wildly different beasts and the costs and demands of the conflicts practically in different dimensions. Should the strikes fail, or be perceived to fail, in any way, the isolationists in the administration will only become louder. I don’t particularly think these strikes will impact Beijing’s calculus one way or another (unless this drags on for a very long time), but I do think the technical data from the bunker strikes will impact how Beijing continues to invest in its own command facilities.
CENTCOM has finally gotten to strike Iran and not only is it clear that no one has any idea of “how this ends”, it’s clear CENTCOM has been overhyping the Iranian conventional threat for years now. All of this has been at the expense of American capabilities and readiness in the primary theater (as identified by MULTIPLE national defense strategies.) End CENTCOM’s grip on the American foreign policy and give INDOPACOM the money, resources, and priority it actually needs to deter the PLA and keep Americans safe. Regardless of what happens next with Iran, every military history of a US-China conflict will open with how much time and energy we wasted on a middling regime in the Middle East and how much blood and treasure it cost us in the Pacific.
If you would like to read more about the future of US-China conflict, the failures of US foreign policy, or what happens next, check out my novel, EX SUPRA. It’s all about the world after the fall of Taiwan, an isolationist and hyper-partisan America, and World War III. It was nominated for a Prometheus Award for best science fiction novel and there’s a sequel in the works! And don’t forget to subscribe!