A naval blockade of Iran is a good start – now let’s really get serious

The President has announced a naval blockade of Iran. That is a move in the right direction. It represents the beginning of long-term strategic planning. We are no longer simply threatening to “bomb them into the Stone Age.” We are leveraging our advantages.

A naval blockade is only the beginning, however. It needs to be part of a much more comprehensive effort. The men running Iran think they are winning. They just showed up in Islamabad and tried to dictate terms of surrender to us. We have a long way to go before they feel compelled to concede anything.

Preventing the Iranians from sending oil and natural gas out to the world and reaping the profits is good. We need a lot more than that to generate the requisite pressure. Nothing of any consequence should move in or out of Iran by any method. That means sealing the land borders, which is going to require pressuring neighboring countries to get on board. That includes Afghanistan. We should be telling the Taliban right now that there won’t be another dollar in “aid” of any kind unless they do the right thing.

It also means cutting off air traffic. No more cargo flights from China carrying unknown cargo. Nobody moves in or out.

While we are preventing the Iranians from making any more cash, we need to seize all the money they have in bank accounts worldwide. Don’t just freeze it. Take it. Apply it to the war effort.

And, while we are blockading Iran, seize and impound any vessel that violates that blockade. Sell the oil. Keep the profits. Apply that to the war effort also.

The Iranians will not sit quietly while we do all this. They will move aggressively to play the cards they have. Anticipate their moves. Act first.

The Iranians are going to be able to produce drones indigenously for some time. They aren’t going to pose much of a threat to our military. They are going to threaten Gulf infrastructure for a long time. As we corner the Iranians, we can expect them to lash out at oil and gas production facilities, desalination plants, and other such targets. We have to take away their ability to do so, and we are not going to get there simply by hunting launchers and drone factories. These things can be built in a garage.

That means enhancing drone defenses in the Gulf on a crash basis. We can’t stop 95% of the drones fired at a refinery and think that is good enough. We also can’t continue to rely on scarce, highly expensive interceptors for this kind of work. We need mass production of cheap, replenishable interceptors, and we need it now. The Ukrainians are the world’s foremost experts on this topic right now. Get them in the game.

The Iranians are going to tell every proxy they have on the planet to hit us wherever they can. Strike first. Much of this fight will take place in the shadows. Energize CIA to take point and issue the necessary lethal findings so the Agency can do what needs to be done. Make it open season on Hezbollah and the like.

Understand that, realistically, we have no idea how many Iranian “sleeper” cells there are in this country. Change that. If the people we have in counterintelligence can’t get on top of this threat, find some people who remember how it is done and get them in the fight.

The more desperate the Iranians get, the more they will want to hurt us. We have a bunch of targets in this country, like chemical and nuclear power plants that are basically prepositioned weapons of mass destruction. If you cause a meltdown at a nuke plant, it won’t explode. It will melt down and render a very large area around it uninhabitable for a very long time. Get serious about security at these targets before they are hit.

The Iranians are also going to come at us in cyberspace. We can expect attacks on government agencies, banks, and anybody else Tehran thinks is worth striking. Move now to buttress our defenses and strike first by attacking their cyber capabilities.

The President’s decision to impose a blockade represents a move toward a winning strategy. It is a good start, but it is only a start. We have a lot of work to do, and we need to get to it right now.

Originally published by AND Magazine