The big news is that a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division has been ordered to CENTCOM. Other ground forces will be available, too. What could they do?
The Pentagon is preparing to deploy about 3,000 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, adding to the thousands of Marines already headed to the region to assist with operations in Iran.
Separately I heard that the division's headquarters element is going, too, so it could command more troops and coordinate joint support for the units it commands.
One Marine Expeditionary Unit (a reinforced battalion) is in the area and another is heading there.
Add in rumors of special forces flowing into Jordan that I read elsewhere. That might include a Ranger battalion.
And we have artillery and helicopters in the region taking part in the war. And air and naval power, of course.
Another Army infantry battalion is in Djibouti, but I assume it remains a regional reserve force. We used to rotate an Army brigade through Kuwait, but I see nothing recent about that. But throw in a set of equipment in Kuwait for an Army brigade that could be manned by troops flown in.
America isn't massing an invasion force, for sure. But it could do a number of things: Capture Iranian-controlled islands in the Strait of Hormuz; capture Iran's Kharg Island oil export hub; defeat an Iranian ground attack through southern Iraq and into Kuwait; deploy to Iraq's Kurdish region to shield Iranian Kurds fighting Iran by providing a sanctuary; attack pro-Iran Iraqi militias; secure Iranian enriched uranium to move it out of the country; other raids into Iran; or base/embassy security.
The Strait of Hormuz mission seems the most likely.
Kharg makes no sense to me. Capturing it would destroy it during the battle. Why not bomb it if that is the end result? And the Marines there would be a missile (and drone) magnet for Iranian forces on the mainland. We can more easily blockade the island or lay naval mines around the island. But who knows? Maybe there is an angle I'm not seeing.
With artillery and air power, defeating a desperate Iranian offensive should not be a problem with American and Kuwaiti forces. Hopefully Iraq would resist an invasion. But just being attacked that way would be a shock.
Deploying to the Kurdish region of Iraq to establish a sanctuary for Iranian Kurds to rest and regroup could be a mission if the war gets to the revolt stage in Iran. We did drop the 173rd Airborne Brigade (stationed in Italy) in Iraq's Kurdish region to support them in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
We and the Israelis already bombard pro-Iran militias inside Iraq. Hitting them with ground troops to add to the damage and capture or scatter them would be useful. This is Phase IX of the Iraq War, after all.
The most ambitious would be Army and Marine combat units plus special forces landing inside Iran to secure Iran's enriched uranium. This seems more likely to be a post-conflict operation that Iran agrees to. But perhaps we know where the uranium is and we think we can reach it, secure it, use air power to keep the Iranians from massing troops to attack in forces, and move it out by loading it on ships or flying it out. But I really doubt it.
Related, I suppose it could be for another type of raid on the mainland. Special forces going in with big units as reserves in case things get hairy. Think Blackhawk Down territory--but without the FUBAR part.
Finally, maybe it is just to reinforce base security in case Iran starts infiltrating their covert guys into the Arab states. We don't want a Khobar Towers or Beirut Barracks attack, eh? Or another embassy attack like Tehran or the Benghazi consulate one.
Those are the missions that I see right now as possible. As I've noted, Iran is too large even for the entire Army and Marine active and reserve forces to pacify. Too big. Too many people. Too mountainous. And too many religious nutballs willing to fight us.
Really, in some ways it seems like standard operating procedure for coping with mullah-run Iran. That deployment looks familiar, no?
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NOTE: Map adapted from WorldAtlas.com
