The Oil Drum

This former US Navy pilot I know, my father, insists that invading Iran would be a logistical nightmare due to the surrounding geography.  

What is your idea of making Iran intentionally cut oil exports without the world understanding that we are the cause?

If you have a clearly defined area to protect, it's much harder on the invader than it is you.

This is probably valid in conventional warfare, but will hardly work with the guerilla resistance I would pick if I were on the Iranian side.

Clearly the chances that we will "restore oil supplies" are even lower than we had them with Iraq. Everybody knows it and the international resistance will be fierce.

Hi Robert,

You wrote:

> Most of the major oil pipelines start in the Persian Gulf
> or in the areas directly across the border from Iraq, and
> then flow up to the north. If these were diverted to the
> south and accross the straights of Hormuz into Dubai or
> Oman. They could easily be transported to any of the
> offloading areas in Saudi Arabia.

Vous rigolez, m'sieu - n'est-ce pas?

You seem pretty knowledgeable about US weapon systems (though so do a lot of people with access to the Internet). But what is your background in the oil industry? You don't just "divert" multiple million barrel per day pipelines, especially with an entire hemisphere of angry Muslims gunning for anything that looks vaguely American. You'd have to invade, occupy and lock down everything from Algiers to Surabaya to get anything like "control" of Iran's oil.

Easier to occupy a limited area? Most of the big fields in southern Iraq (open desert) lie within an hour's drive of each other, 15 minutes by helicopter, 3 minutes by F16 (take your pick, it makes no difference). You can see all the flare plumes from any of the Gathering Centers. Yeah, the Americans - sorry, the Coalition - are doing a bang-up job of maximizing output from the area. NOT.

I should put on record my considered opinion that Shrub isn't stupid enough to try something like this. Old Deadeye's advice has to be good for SOMETHING. And if that wasn't enough, America - sorry, the Coalition - has already had a pretty good demonstration rammed down its throat that it just doesn't work.

Another good reason you can't hijack a country's oil industry is that it's pretty easy under IMO regs to get an international maritime arrest warrant. This lets your bailiffs arrest a ship in any port in the world and tie it up for months (at $40k per day demurrage for a VLCC on current Worldscale dayrates) while the courts puzzle it out. Most shipowners won't touch legally encumbered cargoes (they don't like losing control of their vessels), and last time I looked all the big shipbuilders from San Diego to Singapore were fully booked years ahead (it's those high oil prices, don'cha know?).

Or does your Tom Clancy fantasyland include abolishing maritime law and setting the USMC loose on the high seas looking for tankers to seize?

How much of China's oil gets shipped through the Straights of Hormuz? India's?

Yes, the Iranians could shut down the Straights with one missile. A couple more would shut down the Saudi's. At that point, every country in the world is directly effected. Even net oil producers would be screwed: the following depression would hit them just as much.

The US wouldn't need to invade; the rest of the world would do it for them. The most likely way is assassination, bombing, and a coup. The mullahs hold the power in Iran but there are an awful lot of Iranians who hate them. Military officers freaked at such an action could rebel.

I don't think the Mullahs would last long and I think they know it. They're pretty wealthy and fat these days. It's one thing to convince a boy to seek his reward and quite another to do so yourself.

My only fear is that the cult that the President belongs to tries to bring the Mahdi back; that requires that the world be in chaos, apparently.

As far as limiting world supply goes I think they are much more likely to use al-Sadr in southern Iraq to keep the Iraqi oil off the market (and keep the Americans tied down).

Robert,

In 1980 Saddam attacked Iran because he thought he could take advantage of the internal chaos in the country after the Iranian Revolution. The part he wanted to have is exactly the one you point out: the oil fields.

It took them 8 years and I don't know how many hundred thousand lives to figure out this wouldn't work.

Why is it you think we have any right to do anything with Iran's oil?  It is not ours - does that not mean anything?  Are we so immoral that we believe we can just take whatever we want?  Sure the Iranians hate us - they've every right to, given our apalling behavior in the past.  How does that justify us attacking them?  And until we deal with those who have made no attempt to comply with the NPT, then there is no nuclear issue to use as an excuse.  

If I was a general tasked with invading Iran, I would have an obligation not to commit such a war crime.  I would be required to refuse such an illegal order.  

Tactically, we cannot hold the oil fields against the Iranians.  They do not need electricity to mount human wave attacks, as they did against Iraq.  About all we can hope to accomplish is to destroy the oil infrastructure that is there, so that nobody can get any oil out of it.  

I've considered this over the last six months and more, though not in the military detail you have probably done.

My conclusion was, and is: military invasion of Iran is almost completely non-viable given present situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be an open invitation to escalate insurgency in those countries. It also has almost no benefits - Iranian oil doesn't supply US at all. It would have political repercussions: Chavez might cut oil supply to US. It might lead to impeachment of president. It might encourage a revolution in Saudi Arabia. It would increase instability and violence in Israel / Palestine. It would further isolate the USA.

What might be the benefits? I hope they don't include access to several million bpd oil production, that assumption would be very silly.

It would be insane from just about all perspectives to invade Iran.

If I were advising Ahmadinejad, I'd tell him to have the mudpumps and cement mix standing by in the oilfields.

How long does it take to turn an oil well into not-an-oilwell but just a patch of desert with some cement-plugged pipes?

I think the US Navy base is in Qatar now. Not that it changes anything.

Gain control of Iran's oil while losing control of the Straights and the 15 MMBOPD that goes through it wouldn't do much good.

I think the first thing that you need to note is that the Iranians are not stupid, and any scenario premissed on the Iranians doing something stupid is unlikely to happen, let alone pan out in the way that you think it might; obviously, starting a scenario with the US doing something stupid makes a little bit more sense. The Iranians don't need to take their production of the world market to use it as a weapon - they can selectively lose a couple of hundred thousand barrels of production to a few customers for the pain to start, or send their oil traders on 2-week breaks to Dubai without their mobile phones if they want to make a point and add a couple of dollars to the oil price. They can stop and start this as they please, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it.

The US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan are already fully committed to tasks at hand - ie combatting a raging insurgency. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the Pentagon has yet to master the art of quantum deployment whereby marines that are doing combat patrols in Kandahar or Anbar cannot simultaneously spearhead an offensive into Iran. It's also worth noting that US forces are disposed in the wrong areas for either of these locations to be useful as a launching pad - apart from in Diyala province, there are no substantial concentrations of US firepower adjacent to the Iranian border. It's worth bearing in mind that at least 5000 Iranians go to Iraq every day, and that there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iranian military/intelligence/diplomatic assets in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other countries on their border - they know exactly what is happening on the ground there and any attempt to put forces into a hostile posture will be noted and countered long before anything
leaks into the public domain.

The second thing is that the Iranians have formal, normalised and peaceful diplomatic relations with every country on their border - that includes Turkey, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kuwait, the UAE, Iraq and Afghanistan. None of these countries have any particular motive for getting involved in a hare-brained scheme that is actually going to severely damage their interests. Pakistan complains every time the US military fires at a target in Waziristan - there is no chance of the US using its territory for military operations against Iran. Turkey, which was unwilling to allow the use of a land-corridor into Northern  Iraq in 2003, in spite of a 60 billion bribe has no credible motivation for allowing the US to use its territory for this either ( domestic public opinion will not permit it, and their government is, er, democratically accountable ). Similar considerations apply to the gulf states and Kuwait - they can allow the US to use facilities for this at the price of domestic rebellion and some serious Iranian retaliation. For what?

Of course, the Iranians do have a pretty good idea of the threats ranged against them. This is why their regional military and domestic security system is set up to operate autonomously. Now, the oil areas may be away from the centre, but there are hundreds of thousands of Iranian forces stationed there who would have to be dealt with.  The idea that the US military could just take the Khuzestan area and the Straits of Hormuz and the 500-mile Persian gulf littoral between the 2 areas with 50,000 troops, that the US doesn't have available anyway, is utterly fanciful. And of course, what happens when the Iranians start to fire back - there will be missile attacks against US ships, US bases in the region are all within easy range of Iran's large, varied and mobile missile inventory, and the Iranians will activate their mates in Iraq to cut the US logistics chain from Kuwait. This conflict scenario is pointless because you don't consider the range of Iranian options and what would be necessary to forestall them - once you do that the military assets required for invading and holding bits of Iranian territory and countering the various plays available to Iran are simply never going to materialise.

In short, it's a damn good thing that you aren't a US military planner, as you would be facing severe retribution when you screw up your military in a way that makes Iraq look like a Buckingham Palace Garden Party.