Dubai — Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, worried that they might come under fire if Iran and the United States come to blows, are preparing potential ways to strike back.

Among the scenarios under discussion are Iranian missile attacks on their nations’ territories or ships, and retaliatory airstrikes against Iran, according to regional experts.

“After all the clear threats by Iran against GCC states, it is only natural for their military and security leaders to start weighing the situation and considering their options defensively and offensively,” said retired Maj. Gen. Anwar Eshki, president of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

GCC military and security officials have been meeting both openly and in secret with each other and with their counterparts from the United States and other allies.

The commanders of the six countries’ national security agencies met the week of Oct. 22 in Kuwait City, and their military chiefs of staff met Oct. 30 in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

“The security of the GCC and protection of its resources can only be achieved through a unified military strategy,” said Gen. Saleh Al-Mehaya, the Saudi chief of the General Staff, according to the Saudi News Agency.

Tensions between the United States and Iran are rising.

“GCC countries are obviously and justifiably concerned about the current situation where levels of high tension could lead to a war being sparked by a simple incident in Iraq or the Gulf waters,” said Theodore Karasik, a Middle East analyst at RAND Corp. in Los Angeles.

U.S. officials accuse the Iranians of efforts to build nuclear weapons, and warn that airstrikes may be used to stop them. They say Tehran is funding violent groups in Iraq, Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories, and U.S. forces are trying to crack down on Shiite militias in Iraq.

Iranian officials have threatened to retaliate for any U.S. attack by firing missiles at American regional bases, most of which are located in GCC countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

GCC officials have repeatedly said they will not allow any attack on Iran to be launched from their territories, but Iranian officials have said they would strike U.S. bases in the region no matter where the attack comes from.

“If Iran fires at GCC states, it would only widen its confrontation with the U.S. into a regional conflict by forcing Arab countries to join in on the U.S. side,” said Qassem Jaafar, a Doha-based Middle East defense analyst.

The GCC states, which have a joint defense pact, fought together against Iraq when it occupied Kuwait in 1990 and sent troops to help protect Kuwait shortly before U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003.

“We do expect Iran to fire at GCC states, and we do expect the GCC to retaliate with its superior air and naval assets,” Eshki said.

Karasik said GCC warplanes would hit Iranian ports, coastal airfields and gunboats.

“In order to secure sea lanes and prevent the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which would be a primary objective, GCC and U.S. forces will have to destroy or seize Iranian rigs used as SPODs [bases] and may also have to occupy some Iranian islands, including the three islands claimed by UAE,” Karasik said .

He said such attacks would be executed with the help of U.S. air and naval power.

“Any GCC military operations will have to be done in close coordination and full integration with U.S. and maybe other allied forces,” Karasik said.

Iran, whose population dwarfs that of the six GCC states combined, has a military that no Arabian Gulf state can face on its own. But much of its arsenal is old or low-tech.

The Iranian Air Force, for example, operates 25 aging Northrop Grumman F-14 Tomcats; 25 Russian-made MiG-29s; 24 Chinese-built F-7 M jetfighters; and 185 even older fighter-bombers such as F-4s, F-5s, Su-24s, Su-25s and Mirage F-1s.

That has allowed the oil-rich GCC states to equip their fighting forces with superior aircraft, warships and missiles.

The UAE Air Force flies 80 F-16 Block 60 and Mirage 2000-9 multirole jetfighters, while Kuwait has 39 F/A-18 Hornets, and Bahrain 21 F-16C/Ds. The Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF)’s fighter fleet includes 84 F-15C/Ds, 71 F-15Ss, 85 Tornado IDSs and 22 Tornado ADVs, and its five 1980s-era advanced warning and control system (AWACS) planes are getting Link 16 datalinks. GCC air forces’ standoff missiles include the AGM-65, Maverick, PGM1/2, AS-15 Exocet and Hellfire.

“During the Iran-Iraq War [1980-1988], a pair of Iranian warplanes tried once to attack Saudi targets but were spotted by Saudi AWACS planes from a distance and were downed by Saudi jets the minute they entered the kingdom’s airspace,” Eshki said. “This sort of air superiority is still in GCC favor.”

The GCC navies sail 10 frigates, eight corvettes and 38 missile boats, plus a large number of landing craft, gunboats and patrol boats.

A couple of GCC states have ballistic missiles, such as the UAE’s six Soviet-era Scud-B short-range ballistic missile launchers and Saudi Arabia’s 10 Chinese CSS-2 medium-range ballistic missiles. But the analysts said GCC missile attacks were unlikely unless Iran started attacking Arab cities.

What Iran does have, besides troops, is several thousand ballistic and cruise missiles, including the 1,800-kilometer Shehab. One senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to quotes in an Oct. 20 Iranian News Agency report, said that Tehran would respond to a U.S. strike by launching 11,000 missiles.

“Iranians will try to overwhelm GCC ballistic missile defenses by firing large salvos of missiles against strategic sites,” Karasik said.

If so, the GCC nations will lean on U.S. forces, including Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers in the Arabian Gulf and batteries of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles around its shores, Jaafar said.

Iran might also launch terrorist attacks on GCC soil by sleeper cells.

“That’s why coordination and cooperation between GCC intelligence services, police and national security agencies have intensified recently to track down terrorist cells working for Iran and to deny Tehran such a leverage,” Eshki said. å

E-mail: rkahwaji@defensenews.com.

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