ew annual report sought
AMID TEHRAN CRACKDOWN, REPUBLICANS DEPICT IRAN AS MILITARY THREAT
As Iran cracks down on protests in Tehran over its presidential election and the White House seeks to calibrate its response, House Republicans have advanced legislation requiring the Pentagon to prepare a new annual report on Iran’s military, which is stirring mixed reactions.
The proposed requirement is tucked in the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill approved last week by the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO). Inside the Pentagon has learned the provision was included at the urging of the panel’s Republicans.
“In order to deal effectively with a potential threat from Iran, Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee worked with Chairman Skelton to include a provision that would require policy-makers at the Department of Defense to provide some insight into the capabilities and intentions of Iran’s military,” Josh Holly, a spokesman for the committee’s Republicans, confirmed to ITP.
Congress already produces a similar report about China’s military, which “has been very effective and it’s a model worth replicating -- and adjusting for obvious differences -- in order to provide a better view of Iran’s military,” Holly added.
The bill directs the Pentagon to prepare classified and unclassified editions of the report by March 1 each year, covering the current and future course of military developments in Iran’s army, air force and navy and the Iranian revolutionary guard corps, as well as the tenets and future of Iran’s grand strategy, security strategy and military strategy, and of military organizations and operational concepts.
But retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College and warned against attacking Iran during the Bush administration, is critical of the proposed requirement, which he sees as counter to the Obama administration’s focus on dealing diplomatically with Iran.
“The White House strategy for Iran in based upon the concept of engagement. Supporters of Israel and many Republicans are fighting that strategy from as many directions as possible,” he told ITP.
Gardiner said he would put the committee’s call for the new report into the class of efforts intended to make Iran look “as bad as possible.”
The bill says the report would look at Iran’s strategy toward other countries in the region, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, including a “detailed analysis” of Iranian conventional and unconventional forces facing those countries and U.S. forces in the region.
The report would describe the size, location, and capabilities of Iran’s conventional forces; Iran’s military doctrine; funding for Iran’s military; and nuclear and missile forces. It would also discuss Iran’s unconventional forces, including special operations troops, the Iranian revolutionary guard corps-quds force and support for Hezbollah, Hamas and groups in Iraq.
“As the current political instability underscores, the United States and the international community do not know enough about Iran’s military,” Holly argued. “The Iranian regime continues to aggressively defy the international community with its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.”
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell yesterday dismissed the idea that recent domestic turmoil in Iran might lead to security threats for the region.
“I don’t know that [Defense Secretary Robert Gates] views, frankly, the elections and the fallout and the unrest and the crackdown that has followed as necessarily a regional security threat. This seems to be mostly focused internal to Iran,” Morrell told reporters. “So I don’t know that we’ve seen evidence that has led to any greater external threat posed by Iran at this point.”
“While I know DOD gets frustrated with congressional demands for reports, this action by the Congress highlights the very real problem that we know very little about Iran’s decision-making, strategy and doctrine,” said Kori Schake, a former adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign, a Hoover Institution fellow and the distinguished chair in international security studies at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
“Building some intellectual capital in those areas would be a good investment, both in the defense community and beyond,” she told Inside the Pentagon. Cold War-era reports on Soviet military power were “really helpful,” Schake noted. “While Iran is no Soviet Union, the reports would better inform the public, Congress, other governments, and challenge the Iranian government to answer our description of their behavior.”
In March, the director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, told Congress that Iran is bolstering the three pillars of its strategic deterrence: surface-to-surface missiles, long-range rockets and aircraft for retaliation; naval forces to disrupt maritime traffic through key waterways; and unconventional forces and surrogates to conduct worldwide lethal operations.
“Although many of their statements are exaggerations, Iranian officials throughout the past year have repeatedly claimed both greater ballistic missile capabilities that could threaten US and allied interests and the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz using unconventional small boat operations, anti-ship cruise missiles, and other naval systems,” Blair wrote. -- Christopher J. Castelli
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