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In crisis with Iran, US military officials focus on Strait of Hormuz
In several days of attacks, Israel has targeted Iranian military sites and state-sponsored entities, as well as high-ranking generals. It has taken out many of Iran's ballistic missiles, though Iran still has hundreds of them, US defense officials said.
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But Israel has steered clear of Iranian naval assets. So while Iran's ability to respond has been severely damaged, it has a robust navy and maintains operatives across the region, where the United States has more than 40,000 troops. Iran also has an array of mines that its navy could lay in the Strait of Hormuz.
The narrow 90-mile waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean is a key shipping route. A quarter of the world's oil and 20 percent of the world's liquefied natural gas passes through it, so mining the choke point would cause gas prices to soar.
It could also isolate US minesweepers in the Persian Gulf on one side of the strait. Two defense officials indicated that the Navy was looking to disperse its ships in the gulf so that they would be less vulnerable. A Navy official declined to comment, citing operational security. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
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Iran has vowed that if attacked by US forces, it would respond forcefully, potentially setting off a cycle of escalation.
'Think about what happened in January 2020 after Trump killed Soleimani and times that by 100,' said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Qassem Soleimani, a powerful Iranian general, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad during Trump's first administration. Iran then launched the largest-ever ballistic missile barrage at US bases in Iraq, leaving some 110 troops with traumatic brain injuries and unintentionally hitting a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people aboard.
'Iran is strategically weaker but operationally still lethal across the region,' Katulis said, 'and Americans still have troops across that part of the world.'
Iran has mined the Strait of Hormuz before, including in 1988 during its war with Iraq, when Iran planted 150 mines in the strait. One of the mines struck a US guided missile frigate, the USS Samuel B. Roberts, nearly sinking it.
General Joseph Votel, a former leader of US Central Command, and Vice Admiral Kevin M. Donegan, a former commander of US naval forces in the Middle East, each said Wednesday that Iran was capable of mining the strait, which they said could bring international pressure on Israel to end its bombing campaign.
But such an action would probably invite a massive US military response and further damage Iran's already crippled economy, Donegan added.
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'Mining also hurts Iran; they would lose income from oil they sell to China,' he said. 'Now, though, Iranian leadership is much more concerned with regime survival, which will drive their decisions.'
Military officials and analysts said missile and drone attacks remained the biggest retaliatory threat to US bases and facilities in the region. 'These would be shorter-range variants, not what they were launching against Israel,' Donegan said. 'That Iranian capability remains intact.'
Donegan also expressed concerns about the possibility that the Quds Force, a shadowy arm of Iran's military, could attack US troops. 'Our Arab partners have done well over the years to root most of that out of their countries; however, that Quds Force and militia threat still remains in Iraq and to some extent in Syria and Jordan,' he said.
Iranian officials are seeking to remind Trump that, weakened or not, they still can find ways to hurt US troops and interests in the region, said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Striking Iran, he said, 'gets into such big unknowns.' He added, 'There are a lot of things that could go wrong.'
Much is at stake for Iran if it decides to retaliate. 'Many of Iran's options are the strategic equivalent of a suicide bombing,' said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'They can do enormous damage to others if they mine the Strait of Hormuz, destroy regional oil facilities, and rain a missile barrage against Israel, but they may not survive the blowback.'
But Iran can make it hugely expensive and dangerous for the US Navy to have to conduct what would most likely be a weekslong mine-clearing operation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to one former naval officer who was stationed on a minesweeper in the Persian Gulf. He and other Navy officers said that clearing the strait could also put American sailors directly in harm's way.
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Iran is believed to maintain a variety of naval mines. They include small limpet mines containing just a few pounds of explosives that swimmers place directly on a ship's hull and typically detonate after a set amount of time. Iran also has larger moored mines that float just under the water's surface, releasing 100 pounds of explosive force or more when they come in contact with an unsuspecting ship.
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