The shadow war begins

More tankers came under attack in Persian Gulf waters on Thursday. A Bahamas-flagged crude oil tanker was targeted by an Iranian remote-controlled boat laden with explosives while anchored near Iraq’s Khor al Zubair port. A second tanker at anchor off Kuwait was taking on water and spilling oil after a large explosion on its port side. This attack may have been carried out by a remote-controlled boat as well. That brings the total as of this writing to nine commercial vessels that have been attacked by the Iranians.

The Oman News Agency, the state news agency of the Sultanate of Oman, said on Monday that another oil tanker flagged to the Republic of the Marshall Islands “was attacked by an unmanned surface vessel.” That attack triggered a fire and explosion within the main engine room, killing one crew member.

Iranian forces have been known to have been working with remote-controlled drone attack boats for years. One such vessel, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s “Ya Mahdi” (a reference to Shia Islam’s 12th Imam) unmanned surface vessel, was first publicly described in 2010 as a remote-controlled fast attack craft. In that year, the boat was showcased in exercises in the Straits of Hormuz, and IRGCN commander Ali Reza Tangsiri said that “since the boat has high speed, it is less detectable by radar.” Reporting indicates that the vessel is based on the civilian Bladerunner 51 speed boat, of which manned variants serve with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.

We should understand that the Iranians are unlikely to have only a handful of these suicide boats at their disposal. The Iranians have worked with the Houthis in organizing these kinds of attacks on commercial shipping for years. The Houthis have employed a wide range of small boats in attacks, but they have all had the same relative advantages. They are hard to detect on radar. They can carry large explosive payloads and strike at a vessel’s waterline, causing significant damage. Additionally, these kinds of suicide boats are cheap, easy to produce, and easy to maintain. You don’t need a shipyard to build such a drone. It can be built almost anywhere.

The use by Iran of remote-controlled boats highlights the shift of Iranian forces to the use of unconventional weapons and tactics in responding to the ongoing Israeli and American offensive. This is the beginning of such attacks, and we should expect that they will intensify in the days ahead. We should also expect that they will involve a variety of tactics, not just remote-controlled boats.

We wrote recently about Iranian intelligence collection on American and NATO bases in Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey. There is no reason to think that those are the only locations where the Iranians have prepared to attack our forces using intelligence assets, unconventional tactics, and special operations forces. In fact, the Qataris just arrested an additional ten Iranian assets operating on their soil.

According to the Qataris, the ten individuals in question constituted two separate cells under the direction of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Seven of these individuals were spying on “vital and military facilities” in Qatar, while three were tasked with carrying out sabotage operations. The individuals arrested were found in possession of the locations and coordinates of sensitive facilities and installations, as well as communication devices and other technical equipment.

“During interrogation, the suspects admitted their affiliation with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and that they had been tasked with espionage missions and sabotage activities,” the Qatari News Agency reported.

Clearly, the reach of the IRGC and Iranian intelligence extends broadly to the entire Middle East. The Iranians also have an extensive presence in Central and South America, and they have had contact with the Mexican drug cartels for years. There have been many instances in which we have detected the Iranians working with criminal organizations inside the United States to target dissidents and even to attempt to kill American officials. Whatever their motivation to conduct such attacks in the past, it has obviously been greatly intensified by the scope of the attacks currently underway.

We would be wise also to remember that for the four years of the Biden administration, our border was wide open. We quite literally let anyone simply walk into the country and then disappear into the interior. No one has any idea how many of the millions of individuals who entered the country illegally during that time period were Iranian assets, and no one has any idea where they are right now or what they may be planning.

The Shadow War has begun. We should expect that it will expand and intensify in the days and weeks ahead.

Originally published by AND Magazine