OPINION:
With the Israel-U.S. war on Iran now in its sixth week, it is noteworthy that few commentators have made any assessment of Iran’s strategy.
What is Iran’s approach at this point? Its military capabilities have been devastated, but if that was the determining factor in Tehran’s strategic thinking, then the war would be over. The regime’s strategic focus is survival, and for that, it needs only to outlast the American and Israeli war effort.
Iranian leaders have long commented on America and the West’s aversion to economic and physical sacrifice. They cannot focus the overwhelming power required to destroy neighboring countries’ oil facilities, but they can damage those facilities and control, if not block, the Strait of Hormuz.
That capability has made insurance rates skyrocket to levels that deter shippers from using the strait without Iranian permission. A growing number of countries are seeking an accommodation with Iran to use the passageway, proving that controlling the strait is smarter than blocking it.
Every Iranian drone attack on a shipping terminal, oil refinery or liquefied natural gas processing facility depresses international energy markets’ confidence in global energy supplies. That lack of confidence, driven by fears about Persian Gulf energy output and export shipping capacity, is the force behind global energy prices.
The impact is apparent in the rhetoric of President Trump’s opponents and the rhetorical hand-wringing of America’s traditional allies. All this is creating the political pressures for a ceasefire that Iran’s clerical regime needs so it can concentrate on crushing its domestic opposition.
That is not the only front of Tehran’s psychological pressure on its opponents, however. Iran’s surviving Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership realizes it cannot overwhelm Israel’s defenses, but it can keep up a psychological war on the Israeli people. The advent of Mobile Transport Erector Launchers enables any ballistic missile power to launch attacks from dispersed locations and complicates retaliation by enabling them to flee to hardened, hidden staging facilities.
Those attacks sustain the domestic tensions inside Israel, despite more than 95% of the incoming missiles being intercepted. Even an intercepted ballistic missile spreads deadly debris over large areas of Israeli territory. The almost constant missile attacks disrupt daily life not just in Israel but also in the neighboring Arab countries.
Finally, Tehran recognizes that the U.S. lacks the forces it had during Operation Desert Storm. Iran cannot match U.S. airpower in the skies, but its drones and missiles can hit the airfields from which America’s aircraft must operate. These won’t alter the balance of power, but they will raise the cost of the conflict.
The U.S. no longer produces the E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system, and it canceled its replacement on the hope of some future space-based replacement or the use of the U.S. Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye. E-2Ds based in Saudi Arabia are as vulnerable to drone and missile attacks as the E-3s.
Iran’s skilled but comparatively small cyber warfare force will harass and embarrass American officials and agencies as opportunities arise.
As in the case of the regime’s pressuring of energy markets, Iran’s cyberwarriors will focus their efforts on undermining American confidence in their leaders and systems. They will do it one agency or official at a time, but it will be a sustained effort.
Tehran’s strategy sees a decrementing American political will for the war as the center of gravity in this fight. Energy supply confidence and prices are the most effective tools for achieving that objective.
It has already driven at least two traditional U.S. allies, Spain and Thailand, to seek accommodation. Other countries are also lining up and announcing that they will provide security for shipping once the war has ended and the danger is gone.
That pressure on energy markets will increase significantly if the Houthis decide to reinitiate strikes on shipping in and around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
In effect, this war and Iran’s strategy have successfully separated America from its allies. Defeating Iran’s strategy will be the key to achieving America’s political objectives, whatever they may be.
U.S. Central Command and Israel have conducted an almost flawless military operation, but to paraphrase military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, “war is politics conducted by other means.” In modern war, small boats, minisubs, air and surface drones, and small-scale missile attacks have a political impact far beyond their military effect.
Controlling the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb will be essential to defeating Iran, but doing so will require forces and surveillance to deal with the air-sea insurgency the regime seems to be planning.
• Carl O. Schuster is a retired U.S. Navy captain.
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