Donald Trump is thinking about sending an extra 10,000 soldiers to the Middle East for his war on Iran to join the 3,000 paratroopers and about 5,000 US Marines possibly for ground attacks on Iran.
This is laughable. To succeed Trump would have to deploy every single member of the US armed forces to Iran – upwards of 1.3 million.
At the height of US-led operations in Iraq during the 2007-2008 “surge” ordered by George Bush Jnr, around 185,000 American and allied troops were sent to quell an insurgency that had grown since its dictator was toppled four years earlier by an allied invasion.
Add that number to the 450,000-550,000 Iraqi government forces working with the allies.
And then remember that the so-called Islamic State, formed by ex al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party thugs, took much of the north of the country in 2014, set up a “state” and sponsored global terror for years. So three quarters of a million soldiers was not enough to sort out Iraq.
The US is looking at sending an extra 20,000 of its finest and best resources troops to add to the 50,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women, already deployed in multiple US bases around the Gulf. The latter are busy bombing Iraq and fighting off Tehran’s missile and drone counter attacks.
The number of US troops currently tasked, or being considered for military operations against a nation of 90 million people that is the size of western Europe, is less than were sent to fight in Helmand, southern Afghanistan, at its peak.
The region of Afghanistan had the most intense allied concentration of forces anywhere in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2011.
About 25,000 US Marines surged into the province when the British-led operation there, which expanded from about 3,000 troops in 2006 to around 10,000, was unable to secure the region.
At a peak of about 35,000 the US Marines, British and many other nations who contributed to forces there, were unable to secure a region 28 times smaller than Iran.
The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) based around the USS Tripoli, and the 11th MEU based around the USS Boxer are America’s well trained amphibious attack dogs. Each MEU has about 2,500 personnel.
Their unit structuring could, arguably, be used for a blueprint to turn the shrivelled British armed forces back into an effective single force and vertically integrated all arms machine.
The Tripoli and the Boxer are mini-aircraft carriers carrying Marine fast jets, Marine Osprey vertical take off planes, Marine helicopter gunships and transport helicopters and Marine artillery.
With no inter service rivalry and non stop training as a unit MEUs would be ideal to send to capture targets like Kharg Island, the heart of Iran’s oil export system, which Trump has threatened.
They might also be used to try to drive land-based threats from Iran against shipping trying to get through the 21 mile gap of the Straits of Hormuz. In both cases they might even succeed.
Until, that is, First Person Drones perfected by Russia in Ukraine, and no doubt supplied by Vladimir Putin to Iran, come swarming in and transmit live real-time kill-video of American soldiers being chased around their last moments of horror free-framed by Iranian propagandists.
These were the kinds of scenes that Trump promised Americans would never again have to witness in unnecessary wars of choice, especially not in the Middle East.
Kharg Island is over 300 miles north of the Straits of Hormuz. It’s a valuable economic target but would leave US forces their badly exposed to Iranian air attacks.
And any coastal operations will, inevitably, such troops deeper into Iran where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps looks forward to applying the tactics and techniques it exported to Iraq and trained Hezbollah to use in Lebanon, on soldiers wearing the uniform of the “Great Satan”.
Lieutenant general Sir Nick Borton, a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who was also director of Overseas Operations in the Ministry of Defence of the UK, estimates that the US and any allies who joined it on an Iranian ground attack would need many hundreds of thousands”.
Some former Nato generals have said that the US would need to send “over a million – well over a million” to succeed in a war in the ground inside Iran.
“Ukraine is less than half the size and population of Iran. Russia invaded with 250,000, failed, and now has 800,000 there and still not winning,” Sir Nick said. “So one can conclude that a successful operation on a large scale in Iran would need a lot more than that.
“Of course there could be a tactical operation to seize Kharg Island, or part of the coastline would require less – but for how long?” he told The Independent.
He warned that without clarity of purpose an operation would be “doomed”. For now there is no clear purpose behind the war against Iran by the US. Israel is focussed on regime change.
On top of that Iran has about 600,000 men in its ground forces including the IRGC, the regular army, and Basij militia. All of them spoiling to get the US sucked into an “Iraq 2.0 – the Nightmare” scenario.
So for the Trump administration to send US troops to the Iranian conflict may be an exciting activity for people in the Oval office. But it is pointless and risks delivering to the Iranians more Americans to kill.
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