I don’t think that there is any mystery why Iran would thump its chest these days:
Iran said Sunday that it had test-fired what it described as a sonar-evading underwater missile just two days after it announced that it had fired a new missile that could carry multiple warheads and evade radar systems.
The new missile is among the world’s fastest and can outpace an enemy warship, Gen. Ali Fadavi of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards told state television.
General Fadavi said only one other country, Russia, had a missile that moved underwater as fast as the Iranian one, which he said had a speed of about 225 miles per hour. State television showed what it described as the missile being fired.
“The missile carries a very powerful warhead that enables it to operate against groups of warships and big submarines,” he said.
In other words – keep your distance, yanks, ’cause we sting. The sunburn antiship missile is a pretty vicious piece of work and I have no doubt that Russia and Iran have shared that and more, and rumors about super-torpedoes have floated around for a while now, but stuff like this sounds like gilding the lily:
He contended that the boats that would launch the missile were able to evade detection systems but that “even if an enemy’s warship sonar can detect the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed.”
They have cloaking devices? Persian stealth? The only way that sort of thing might work is if they put the missiles inside an oil tanker, or fired them from shore. I would venture a guess that there is not much floating in or on the Persian Gulf that we cannot detect, meaning that as soon as hostilities break out whatever subs or ships Iran might field against us will swiftly become expensive artificial reefs. We built our military around meeting a similarly-equipped enemy on the open field of battle (Russian tanks on the plains of Germany and Russian fleets in the open ocean) and after the last few years I am sure that our army would absolutely love for Iran to give us that sort of fight.
Of course Iran won’t do that, because they don’t have to. If we bomb Iran the Shiite population of Iraq will become one big, Persian-equipped guerilla movement. We might as well pull out now and save the blood on the sand that it would cost us to pull out after bombing Iran. But why bomb at all if Iran just rebuilds underground? We would need boots on Iranian soil in order to seriosuly wanted to enforce our will there, an option also known as invading. Not going to happen.
Here comes the inevitably-frustrating paragraph where I offer solutions. Maybe I can think of a thing or two but what is the point of having a wonkish policy discussion when the people in charge a) don’t care about policy, and b) couldn’t toast bread without assistance. Greg Djerejian has latched onto the idea that Runsfeld must go, and there’s merit to that, but I don’t think that he goes far enough. A too-large number of DC decisionmakers still inhabit a fantasy world where the idea of America spreading its freedom seed through a Trotskyite wave of military interventions still has credibility.
Given the resources that we have to work with I think that a broad multinational consensus has a chance of persuading Iran. Russia and China won’t be easy to keep in line but if a nuclear-armed Iran is important enough an issue to go to war over then we can spend the time and capital managing allies. Maybe it’s starry-eyed idealism to even think that might work, and maybe it is insane to think that the executive branch could even handle that sort of task, but the other options range from unavailable to mind-numbingly stupid. We might as well figure out how to play the pair of jacks in our hand as wish for three aces and in wishing begin to convince ourselves that’s what we have.
Pb
Amen. What if Rumsfeld were kicked out (or, you know, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and sent off to ‘spend more time with his family’, hint, hint), who’s the least qualified person for the job who would therefore inevitably replace him? Wolfowitz? And what does it matter, if Cheney’s still the one calling the shots anyhow.
No, it doesn’t matter at this point how many people you fire, because they’ll ‘stay the course’, right down the drain. We’d have to fire *all of them*.
p.lukasiak
Iran doesn’t need to fire their super-missile at one of our warships…. all they need to do is scuttle a supertanker in the Straits of Hormuz, and the war is over….and the USA lost.
…and you gotta feel sorry for Greg D. He’s coming to grips with what a complete disaster Iraq is after supporting it for three years, and doing so in public.
Davebo
Greg Djerejian has indeed long been latched on to the Rumsfeld must go meme, but sadly I think that’s just his way of helping him sleep at night.
Though Rumsfeld has certainly botched the occupation, he is but one part of the problem, and not the biggest part.
And replacing the Don will have about as much affect as replacing Andrew Card.
Anderson
How do you say “flying carpet” in Farsi?
Because that would be a really cool name for an Iranian missile.
Just saying.
Zifnab
It’s also got lasers and machine guns, and is pilotted by an elite team of super ninja robot assassins who will reck certain doom upon the infidels!
Does anyone else think Iran is talking absolute bullshit? A nation that can’t produce it’s own automobiles is telling us about its newest line of elite super-missles that they aquired from… ? Where? Their own ultra secret underground laboratories filled with hundreds of Yale educated super-scientists? Or did they purchase this from that country who’s own missles are unable to compare to Iranian cutting edge technology?
B.S. in a big gold bucket.
srv
Well, Rense is a bit over the top. Try FAS: Sunburn
Rocket torpedo. Cool. The way it will work with the Iranian “navy” is that they’ll use small boats to launch torpedos and radio initial guidance coordinates to those launching sunburns. Foiling and tracking lots of little boats is something Aegis Cruisers are not well adept at. They tend to get confused and shoot down airliners in that environ.
The Other Steve
Will Bush call for funding for Operation Poseidon? A underwater anti-super missile shield to protect our shipping from this disasterous threat?
I would like to volunteer my time and services to this enterprise! For the small sum of only $10 million, I believe I could research the possibility and have a report ready by the end of the year.
Which congressman do I have to bribe to get me this contract?
srv
Ah, but they are a nuclear threat, eh?
Marcus Wellby
The easiest solution to the Iran problem is to equip the likes of Stormy and Darrel with some nunchucks and drop them into Tehran under the cover of night. By morning the entire population of Iran will be praying to Republican Jesus and watching American Idol. Case closed.
Tim F.
Russia. Read the Rense piece that I cited in the post.
searp
Google Shkval.
The underlying issue is whether we can be victims of technological surprise. We can. Nobody in the defense establishment has ever been particularly concerned about this, because it is doctrine that we have the best technology. Everywhere. All the time.
This transcends administrations, and the attitude became ingrained after the fall of the Wall and the resulting political imperative to collect a peace dividend. That dividend was collected, in part, from technology and other places that didn’t have the constituencies that B2 bombers or aircraft carriers have. It became an article of faith that everything we did during the Cold War was “bad” (too expensive), and anyway, we were so far ahead of our potential opponents that we could rest on our laurels.
The Navy doesn’t want to operate capital platforms in the large puddle that is the Persian Gulf. Personally, I have always thought this was sensible. Stand off and pound the hell out of your opponents, I say. I suppose this idea has become incrementally more attractive.
Historical Wit
Well after that whole Iran/Iraq war back in the 80’s, Iran has been kinda quiet. Just sitting there selling oil and saving money. I would not put it past them to have bought this technology. Shoot, everything is for sale…
Tim F.
Oy. From Rense (via Jane’s and other sources), the Sunburn’s range is about 200 miles. The maximum width of the Persian Gulf, whose northern shore consists of Iran, is 230 miles. The Strait of Hormux is 21 miles wide. The idea of Iran threatening us from shore isn’t actually that much of a stretch.
searp
Iran’s coastline is the unsinkable aircraft carrier. They always threatened us from shore, even the Silkworms are threatening.
Sunburn has been around for a while. It is a baad weapon. We can and do threaten Iran right back. The cost of a military confrontation may be incrementally higher, but Iran doesn’t pose a conventional threat to us. As a previous commenter pointed out, we just love it when people stand and fight.
Par R
Duncan Black offers this policy option re the Iranian nuclear issue:
“Certainly an Iran-with-nukes could blow the hell out of a city or two, but an Iran that did such a thing would pretty much cease to exist. It isn’t mutually assured destruction, it’s you fuck with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!”
I’m not sure Tiny Meat is ready for Prime Time quite yet.
Al Maviva
What makes you think China or Russia will get involved on our side? Damn skippy you are an idealist. For Russia to be on the U.S. side w/r/t Iran will require some stakes that give Russia a big, highly probable, unambiguous win. They have history in Persia, and they have long had designs on gaining access to a warm water port in the region, along with control of more oil fields. Any solution that brings Russia into conflict with the Gulf States would fuel increased rebellion among Islamacists, whether funded by bad actors in the Gulf States or simply stirred up by religious ardor. So we’d probably have to make it worth Russia’s while to help, which would probably involve agreeing to let Russia be Russia w/r/t Chechnya and some other troublesome regions. I’d wager it’s a direction you don’t much appreciate. As for China, I can’t see them doing anything that might help the U.S. in this arena, and further that they view anything that ties up U.S. attention, diverting it from China’s maneuvering, as a good thing.
SeesThroughIt
I was gonna say we should send Steven Seagal and, if we’re feeling particularly angry, Chuck Norris, but your plan works well, too.
ChrisO
The rocket torpedo is almost certainly a customised version of this: the VA-111 Shkval, which Russia has been touting for export. The really interesting question here is why is Russia selling such advanced pieces of kit to Iran, of all countries?
Andrew
Two words: Cash. Money.
The entire russian arms industry survives on exports. Cash rich 3rd world countries are the ideal customers.
Anderson
Hm. I don’t recall ever agreeing with Maviva before, but he is right on this one.
Russia has a Very Large Interest in keeping nice with Iran. They’re on the border, they have a stable of Islamic terrorists, & Russia doesn’t need any more Islamic terrorists fucking with it than it already has.
China’s interests are less directly involved, but it has nothing to gain from ticking off Iran and plenty to gain from keeping them happy & from annoying the U.S.
Zifnab
Ah. Yes. Well, I suppose the Russians could manage it. Still, I retain my serious suspicions. If I remember correctly, the US has complained about a lack of Tommahawk Cruise Missles in their arsenal more than once because they come at such a high monetary cost. I can’t imagine Iran could be fielding too many of these state-of-the-art weapons if they just purchased them over the counter.
searp
Everyone takes it as a given that Iran is a dire strategic threat, and then hyperventilates about what we should do about it.
Our perception of this threat is vastly different from the perceptions of Russia and China. Our perception of the threat is more akin to that of (pick one) Saudi Arabia or Israel. Strange bedfellows, I know, but they probably agree about Iran.
Amazing.
Anderson
Well, they’re our allies (sic), and we’re getting our regional perceptions largely through them, I suspect. No wonder we’re psychotic on the subject.
tbrosz
As others have pointed out, it helps if the “allies” aren’t actually working for the other side. We’ve already gotten some pretty big hints that Russia was helping Saddam against us while at the same time blocking us in the U.N. Not to mention Syria’s presence on the Security Council back then. The coalition we assembled for Iraq pretty much contained all the nations that weren’t on the take already.
tzs
Sigh…”other side…”
Tbrosz, there is no “other side.” The world isn’t divided into Black vs. White, or Us vs. Them. We may work with some countries on certain issues, politely decide to disagree on others, and go against them on even other issues.
And because Country A worked with Saddamn Hussein in the past doesn’t mean we can’t work with them now or develop some sort of wary realization that working together about Country C on this particular topic is stabilizing for everyone.
r4d20
One might want to take the ranse.com site with a bit of skepticism. I’m not sure it makes a difference on this issue, but the site is filled with some weirdness.
http://www.rense.com/general70/ilum.htm
Stormy70
American Idol?! WTF.
Russia is sucking on Iran’s hind teat, and they are not about to let loose. According to the UN, Iran has thirty days before they get another tongue
bathlashing from the likes of the crowd who brought us Oil for Food and Sex for Food. I am not inspired to trust some of our so-called “allies”.carpeicthus
You forget their secret weapon: The Iron Sheik.
Sirkowski
I don’t think the boat that hit the USS Cole had stealth capabilities…
Baron Elmo
Does this mean that we can crank up the Cold War again? Cause I was kind of feeling nostalgic…
Just think: all the old school Cold Warriors of the Bush administration who helped screw Operation Iraqi Freedom into a Grade-A clusterfuck can get back to the kind of conflict that they actually know something (that is to say, more than nothing) about.
Even then, I’d still give the boot to Rumsfeld… he can’t be trusted with a cigar box full of plastic army men, much less actual troops.
Gray
Hmmm. You mixed facts up a bit, Tim. This ‘sonar-evading underwater missile’ seems to be a rocket propelled torpedo, much like the russian VA-111 Shkval and is running submerged and (of course) subsonic. This is not comparable to the SS-N 22 Sunburn, which is a supersonic, sea-skimming ship-to-ship missile (kind of Super-Harpoon). The Sunburn with it’s range of 150 km and his high speed and low radar reflection at wavetop level would be very difficult to intercept and in the enclosed waters of the golf it would be difficult to stay away from its posssible launch places.
The Shkval is, afaik, impossible to destroy while running underwater at high speed, except for a nuclear explosion. But I can’t imagine that a noisy missile torpedo will be sonar-evading. And it surely doesn’t have a long range and no iranian fighter or submarine will ever come close enough (about 10 miles) to a carrier group under normal circumstances.
Imho the recent test of the improved iranian ballistic missile with multiple warheads is a much higher threat to an US carrier force. There is still no counterweapon against multiple incoming nuclear warheads. The US star wars program can’t even destroy a single warhead most of the time and it isn’t ship based.
Tim F.
Gray,
I think that you’re largely confirming what I understood to be the case. The torpedo and stealth-boat threats seem like little more than gilding the lily, and I disagree about the ballistic missile threat because Iran couldn’t possibly field a nuke before five years at earliest, but all that’s irrelevant because what they already have poses enough of a threat.
Imagine an oil tanker that launches a shitload of Sunburns simultaneously as it passes ‘near’ (150 km isn’t that near) a carrier group. The fight for the Gulf could be over in minutes.
Anyhow, Iraq moots the entire debate. We bomb Iran, the shiites erupt in rebellion and we’re strategically fucked.
Rick DeMent
There are many who believe that the reality of current military technology and tactics (particularly asymmetrical warfare) there only two kinds of navel vessels, submarines, and targets.
JWeidner
LOL. Ahhh, the good ole WWF. I say the whole Iran/US confrontation needs to be solved by a good old-fashioned cage match. Hulk Hogan vs. The Iron Sheik…
muddy
I doubt the Iranians want to sink ships to block the Strait of Hormuz. A blockade, sure. Or setting up guns on their side and threaten so that no one dares to go through, sure.
But if they permanently block the Straits they will screw themselves as much as, or really more than, they screw us. That’s how they get their own oil out. Why would they want to cut off their own income that way? It’d be a real cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face move, and I don’t think they are that stupid.
LITBMueller
In addition, BOTH China and Russia have a VERY LARGE interest in oil and natural gas. China, particularly, has been seeking agreements with Iran for natural gas.
Ironically, before the war, China had been working to develop relations with Saddam to get access to Iraq’s oil, but the war wiped out that possibility.
Any attack on Iran will have an immediate impact on world energy prices. The resulting spike (which could be massive if Iran imposes an embargo, or if OPEC gets in on the act and punishes the US for its agressiveness (remember, there are reports now that Saudi Arabia, too, might be developing nuclear technology)), would harm not only our own exconomy, but also Russia and China.
You would think that this would be a great incentive for all three countries to work together, but, IMO, it is clear that the Administration is determined to force “the military option.”
Pharniel
here’s the deal.
there’s video of the ‘super missle’ thingy, and as people have said, it’s basicall a rocket powered torpedo.
It’s immune to sonar actually because it allows the weapon to travel in a super-cavitated space (giant air bubble in the water) and if you watch the bbc vid it’s…amazingly fast. it also can’t stear, and i bet it has shit range. And it’s only immune to active sonar, though passive would have a hell of a time because of the speed.
My understanding was that it was originally designed for sub to sub warfare or sub to surface, where a stright shooting killing machine like that would come in quite handy, i don’t see it being a real threat from a bunch of pt boats, because, well, radar guided guns.
the ship to ship missles are the bigger threat, and yha, we really should just stay clear of the gulf this time, and hit ’em from iraq and saudi arabia.
the real worry for me is take a small craptastic nuke, combine it with the rocket torpedo and sneak it into a harbor, say, one of the desert loving raider arabs that the farsi speaking persians might not like? and the fact that they are helping the great satan just adds to the temptation to teach ’em a lesson.
but iran could fight a nice guirlla war, and do some serious damage, which means most people are going to go for apeasement.
so where’s operation success, MK II?
scarshapedstar
We might as well figure out how to play the pair of jacks in our hand as wish for three aces and in wishing begin to convince ourselves that’s what we have.
But we dooooooo!
Ace #1: Freedom.
Ace #2: Democracy.
Ace #3: George W. Bush.
USA! USA! USA!
grizzlybear
Unfortunately, the Iranians have the best missile technology in the world. I would say even better than the Russians.
All Iran has to do is to take out one American supercarrier and public support for Bush will collaspe completely. The Iranian supercavitating torpedo as well as the Sunburn missile far outstrips anything the Americans can field.
Let’s not forget the Iranians also have hundreds of exocet missiles tucked away into their rocky Northern shoreline of the Persian gulf.
If America went to war with Iraq, she would have to send her navies into this Persian gulf. Any ship caught north of the straits of Hormuz would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
The only possible way for America to win a war against Iran would be to go nuclear with long range ICBMs and completely destroy the entire country.
Iran is way too strong for a conventional tussle. America would get its butt kicked in two seconds flat.