UK Can't Fight New Gulf War

Britain Cannot Fight A New War In The Gulf

By Michael Clarke
Last Updated: 1:28am BST 16/09/2007
Telegraph

...General David Petraeus may be heading an American push to get Britain's forces more engaged along the Iraq/Iran border, but any major shift of British military priorities is effectively out of the question.

From an operational perspective there is only so much more the British could give to border patrolling. The five battle groups presently based at the air station will be reduced to four in November.

One of those will be devoted to force protection, one to guarding supply routes and the rear area, and a third is kept ready as a rapid intervention force. That leaves one battle group to assist Iraqi members of the Department of Border Enforcement, which is only a third of the size it was under Saddam and needs all the training and equipment it can get.

The southern border with Iran is more than 200 miles long and extremely porous. The US is opening a new base in the area and a Georgian detachment is being expanded to help.

But none of this, least of all the Georgians, will worry very much the smugglers, terrorists, militias and Iranian agents who treat the area as international common land.

For the British military the border question is not about patrolling so much as using intelligence to intercept Iranian agents and equipment on the Iraqi side.

British troops are quite disposed to use force against the militias and the Iranian agents who support and supply them, but strictly within Iraqi territory.

They have neither the appetite nor capacity for "hot pursuit" operations across the border, and there is a major political red line against any action which would provoke significant military confrontation with Iran.

This may be the crux of the honest and cousinly exchanges taking place between British and American commanders. Exactly when Britain leaves Iraq has become a tough political question, but the drawdown and progressive disengagement, probably via Kuwait, is not open to negotiation.

British forces in the south can help the US by maintaining divisional headquarters, protecting key routes, acting as the tactical reserve and contributing to growing special forces operations.

But British commanders will not want to offer any more as they have at their disposal a "one-shot" force which can fight a single war at a time, generally for a short period only.

The force effectively has to be rebuilt after each campaign. That time has now arrived in Iraq, and the one shot the Army now intends to devote itself to is Afghanistan.

Being drawn into a shooting war with Iran is completely off the British agenda - military, political and diplomatic.

In any such war, the US would be strictly on its own this time.

• Professor Michael Clarke is director of the Royal United Services Institute in London.