Periscope
16 NEWSWEEK.COM JUNE 28, 2019
MIDDLE EAST
“From the Iranian
point of view, the status
quo is not sustainable.
Their economy
cannot survive on
zero oil exports.”MILITARY MIGHT The growing
presence of U.S. armed forces
off the Iranian coast is part of
escalating tensions on both sides.to provide a revised military plan to
send as many as 120,000 troops to the
Middle East in the event of an Iranian
attack on U.S. forces or a resumption
of its nuclear program. The size of
the force approached the number of
troops that invaded Iraq in 2003.
In an indication of the sharp divi-
sions within the administration over
Iran policy, Trump, an opponent of
America’s open-ended troop presence
in the Middle East, later approved of
sending only 1,500 additional troops
to the region.
Recently, there’s been some specu-
lation that Trump might fire Bolton
for being too hawkish. White House
officials acknowledge that the two
men do not have a close relationship.
But for now, they add, the president
appears to be content to use Bolton in
the role of “bad cop,” if only to keep
Iran guessing about U.S. intentions.
“The nice thing I like about our
policy is that I’m quite sure that the
Iranians have no idea what President
Trump might do,” retired Gen. James
Jones, a former Obama national secu-
rity adviser, told The Hill recently.
“They’re off balance, and they might
wake up one morning and find they
no longer have a navy, for example.”
The example Jones chose was not
random. In April 1988, in the largestnaval engagement since World War II,
the U.S. Navy attacked Iranian naval
forces in retaliation for Iran’s mining
of the Persian Gulf during the Iraq-
Iran war, a move that heavily dam-
aged an American warship. By the end
of the battle, U.S. forces had sunk or
crippled half of Iran’s operational fleet.
Regional experts say the Iranian
military learned valuable tactical les-
sons from that engagement —lessons
that American officials and indepen-
dent analysts believe they’re now
using in the current confrontation
with the U.S. forces. “The lessons the
Iranians learned was you don’t go at
the U.S. military conventionally; you
go at U.S. interests asymmetrically,”
says Miller, now vice president of the
Wilson Center, a foreign policy think
tank in Washington. “So using mini-
subs manned by Iranian special forces,
they plant mines on Saudi and Emirati
tankers. Meanwhile, the Houthis send
a drone to attack a portion of Saudi’s
East-west pipeline.”
Miller says both of these attacks
were significant—and an ominous
preview of what’s likely in store as long
as the Trump administration main-
tains its economic stranglehold on
Iran. “They struck these tankers five to
12 miles off the coast of Fujairah,” one
of the United Arab Emirates, he says.
“The pipeline was taking Saudi oil to
terminals on the Red Sea. The attacks
were unconventional—no one was
killed—and very hard to prove author-
ship. They’re certainly no cause at this
point for the United States to attack
the Iranians directly.”
Other regional experts agree that
Iran was most likely behind the tanker
and pipeline attacks, adding they were