Could the Iran War Shatter US Power Projection in the Middle East?

James Holmes

A prolonged crisis in Hormuz could drive the US Navy out from its longstanding base in Bahrain. Trouble would inevitably follow.

This week’s ceasefire aside, the portents are grim for the US Navy’s long-term posture in the Middle East and beyond. Even if the Trump administration manages to broker a lasting peace to follow the ceasefire—an outcome ardently to be desired—the Navy leadership and the regional overseer, US Central Command, will almost certainly balk at sending ships of war back into the Persian Gulf for the foreseeable future. The past month-plus of war has shown without doubt that ships could be stranded within the Gulf and attacked with success should combat reflash. And that could happen at an instant’s notice.

After all, Iran commands a permanent and unyielding geographic advantage over the Strait of Hormuz. While by most accounts US and Israeli operations have demolished the regular Iranian Navy and Air Force, the irregular Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) retains an assortment of “mosquito fleet” anti-access weaponry. These nuisance weapons with a sting include armed watercraft operating in company with lesser craft—even sail-driven fishing dhows—able to spill mines into the contested waterway. Anti-ship missiles and drones likewise comprise part of the IRGC panoply.

And it’s worth noting that IRGC commanders have taken on outsized sway over Iranian politics. They could dispatch the mosquito fleet to sting again with impunity.

In short, transit through the Strait will remain a wicked problem so long as the Islamic Republic survives—and the odds imply it will. The prospect of seeing this strategic waterway closed again also means the Pentagon and White House may rethink the status of Bahrain as a major fleet hub. The island nation, a firm and longstanding US ally and host to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, boasts a logistical support capability—refueling, rearming, resupply—that would become a wasting asset should the Navy withdraw from the Gulf more or less permanently.

There are two major implications to this—one bad, one very bad.

What If America Loses Its Naval Presence in the Middle East?

First, the bad. The Persian Gulf region will become a predominantly aviation theater if the US Navy cannot reach its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners by water. In that case, US military access to the theater would have to come by air. Air access would necessarily limit the US ground presence in the Gulf. After all, the most capacious transport aircraft can carry only a fraction of the troops and cargo that an amphibious transport ship can.

There’s diplomatic import to such a geopolitical turnaround. Substituting air for sea transport could well limit the United States’ ability to show that it still has skin in the game of Gulf Arab allies’ defense. Rightly or wrongly, the type and scale of martial resources the US has historically kept in Bahrain offer a measure of concrete commitment. Even a predominant ally exerts only middling influence with its allies when it commits only a middling force to the cause. GCC governments could well draw back from their partnership with Washington.

And second, the very bad. Think about what foregoing access to the Bahrain naval hub would do to the US basing posture ringing the Eurasian periphery. Bypassing Bahrain would shatter the central link in a chain of US naval bases stretching from Japan to Gibraltar and into the North Atlantic. The geopolitical implications of such a loss would be both acute and chronic. Yale geopolitics sage Nicholas Spykman observed that to shape events in the “rimlands” ringing the Eurasian supercontinent, a globe-spanning navy such as the US Navy must be able to wrest command of “marginal seas” around the continental periphery from local opponents.

In other words, a dominant navy had to be able to get to the rimlands to radiate influence into the rimlands—as Spykman thought it should. And to get there, it had to control the sea.

The Persian Gulf is one such marginal seaway. The United States would lose substantial influence in the Middle East if unable or unwilling to seize control of the Persian Gulf. To be sure, air power and air-delivered land power could compensate in part. But the US joint force would partially lose its ability to stage operations in the Indian Ocean if forced to operate from distant sites such as Australia or allies in Southeast or East Asia.

America’s Crack-Up with NATO Makes Everything Worse

That’s grim enough. But the venom in Washington’s relations with NATO could make things far worse, furthering poisoning alliance endeavors. Great Britain might continue to deny access to its base on Diego Garcia, enfeebling the US military’s ability to stage operations in the Indian Ocean, along with its anterooms such as the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden. Among the alternative support facilities in South Asia, neither Diego Garcia nor Camp Lemonnier, the US outpost in Djibouti, can substitute for Bahrain.

But things could get even worse if there were a partial or complete breakup between the United States and NATO. The US Navy’s Mediterranean and North Atlantic posture would prove precarious without bases in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Israel would probably grant access to its seaports, but such access would constitute at best a partial substitute for decades-old, well-furnished European naval facilities. And it would leave whatever fleet detachment tarried at Israeli ports under the shadow of Iranian missiles and drones should hostilities flare anew.

Israeli basing would represent an improvement over having ships bottled up in a potentially embattled Gulf, but it would be far from ideal.

That’s One Way to Get a “Pivot to Asia”

In this nightmare scenario—if events broke the chain of bases stretching westward and northward from Singapore and Australia—then US maritime strategy would come to have a Western Hemisphere and Western Pacific cast, assuming relations with Pacific allies remained steady and base access secure. Such a posture would conform to the regional priorities spelled out in the new 2025 National Security Strategy and 2026 National Defense Strategy, which situate the Americas firmly atop the US list of regional priorities while also depicting the Western Pacific—facing down China in particular—as indivisible from security and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere.

Having allies fracture the United States’ Eurasian presence would be a mighty haphazard way for the US armed forces to pivot to the Pacific, as the Obama State and Defense departments vowed to do nearly fifteen years ago. But so it could be.

US allies, partners, and friends should ponder that. A US departure would subtract US naval power from the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean, leaving regional powers to tend to security and prosperity in their home waters. A burgeoning Indian Navy may be prepared to assume responsibility for waters adjoining the subcontinent. In fact, New Delhi covets the status of a beneficent hegemon over the Indian Ocean region. But are NATO navies fit to assume responsibility for waters lapping against European shorelines? And are NATO governments prepared to do so?

The Iran war has upended geopolitics and alliance politics. Both America and its overseas allies, partners, and friends should all take a breather—and mull the potentially grave repercussions of the late unpleasantness. Think about the worst before plunging ahead.

About the Author: 

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare, Marine Corps University. The views voiced here are his alone.