5th Fleet Focus: The Fox Fallon Factor

Building on our assessments this morning. There appears to be political tension within the Navy on how to handle these events. CENTCOM doesn't want to talk about them, and would like these events to not leak out into public discussion. Handling difficult situations privately is textbook Admiral Fallon, which is probably why Gates wanted him in the CENTCOM position despite a lot of resistance in the administration at the time. When the Kitty Hawk / Song submarine incident occurred in the Pacific in 2006, we didn't hear about the incident until several months later from Bill Gertz, who quoted sources in the Pentagon. If you recall, Fallon didn't appear to happy about all the public attention the leak of incident generated.

In this case, CNN broke the story via sources in the Pentagon, not from CENTCOM. The Pentagon has no doubt requested more information since the event went public, which is why we are now hearing about previous incidents including incidents where warning shots were fired.

There are probably mixed feelings inside the Navy over these incidents creating a rift between the Pentagon and CENTCOM, a rift that has evident on other issues in the past. I'm sure there are many in the 5th fleet who want to see these types of events go public, because they are on the front lines dealing with these dangerous situations wondering where the political leadership is to support them. Leaking the incident to generate a public political response supports that line of thinking, some believe the public political response towards Iran supports the sailors dealing with these encounters and believe the attention puts pressure on Iran to stop.

The other line of thinking, the Fallon / Gates camp, prefers to keep these type of events quiet. Under Gates and Fallon, the tension between the US and Iran has been reduced on every issue, the threatening public rhetoric to Iran from administration and Pentagon officials had almost dropped to zero prior to this incident, from the nuclear issue to the Iraq issue, even the blocking strait scenarios had disappeared from the weekly reporting on topics relating to tension between the US and Iran. Reducing public tension is a textbook Fallon strategic approach, I bet many of you US and foreign naval observers in the Pacific region who remember that style in US matters related to China recognize it..

Americans who are outraged that Iran would intimidate our warships should recognize the Iranian response falls well within what we should expect from Iran. I doubt for a minute the Navy didn't expect this. The Bush administration sends plenty of threatening rhetoric towards Iran, and the Democrat Congress passed several laws this session calling for sanctions and for the IRGC to be labeled a terrorist organization. All these Americans who are acting surprised or don't believe Iran doesn't have good reason to intimidate our warships have the expectation that Iran is sitting silent taking our constant official threats and doing nothing about it. Iran makes plenty of threats, it used to be the implied threat of shutting down the Straits, but OPEC put a stop to most of that rhetoric. Now they are playing on the fears of the Navy.

The IRGC is evolving. They got smacked around in the media with the UK hostage thing, learning the lesson there is no diplomatic sympathy for thugs. The new tactics play to the concerns of the US Navy, small boat swarms, because the US Navy is intimidated by this threat following the Cole incident. Nothing we have seen so far, actions and reactions from both sides including the critical rhetoric appears of a conspiracy nature, and even the IRGC small boat actions don't appear to be outside the bounds of reasonable expectations. It appears to us like the players are acting exactly as we should have expected considering the leadership positions of both the US and Iran over the last several years.