War Games against Iran: Lessons Ignored
President Trump has ripped up the Iran Nuclear Deal. Now his new Secretary of State is announcing that our government will commercially squeeze Iran in a comprehensive campaign of sanctions, which will in all likelihood also involve maritime interdiction of Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. US Secretary of State Pompeo has declared that “These will indeed end up being the strongest sanctions in history when we are complete,” Pompeo said in remarks at the Heritage Foundation.
Saudi Arabia has already been blockading Yemen by stopping commercial ships from entering that impoverished county’s ports. Saudi Arabia has also been using the US Navy to choke off maritime commerce in those same waters. The dangers of using the US Navy as if it is something along the lines of the DEA for the blockading of Iranian ships will leave the US Coalition very vulnerable to Iranian actors; as an American war game has clearly shown:
Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a war game which ended up revealing the vulnerabilities of the US Coalition’s Navy in the Persian Gulf. Results of the MC02 war game showed that Iranian naval and land forces could easily wipe-out an entire US fleet, including the air-craft carrier used in the war game. General Riper commanded the simulated Iranian forces, and simply overwhelmed the US Coalition in a surprise mass offensive involving primitive tactics which did not use radar and forcing the US missile defense system (Aegis) to suffer from white-out sensory conditions due to the coordinated missile and sea-born IED attacks. The MC02 war game shows just how vulnerable the US Navy is to a surprise attack in the Persian Gulf from Iran. Sadly, the lessons from the war game were not incorporated, and the warnings have largely not been heeded. The US Navy should not be left vulnerable to such a potential assault from Iranian forces. Unfortunately, it seems that Trump is fine to let Pompeo and the Saudis dictate that the our Navy be left in harms way, as they are to be used as a global police force which would be easily wiped out by an Iran left desperate by sanctions, such as the Japanese were when they attacked Pearl Harbor.
Rumsfeld's War Games (2006, April). military.com. 
https://web.archive.org/web/20060504005348/http://www.military.com/opinion/0%2C15202%2C95496%2C00.html
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/21/mike-pompeo-iran-sanctions-600922