Even so, he did believe the Iranian plan had a fair chance of success. Back home in Moscow his superiors were still bickering over whether to warn the Americans of their peril. Their decision, he knew, depended in large part on his assessment of the situation in Tehran. If the Iranians had no chance of success, it was in Moscow's best interests to throw in their lot with the Americans. However, a successful American invasion of Iran would bring certain documents to light — most especially those regarding Moscow's covert assistance with Iran's military nuclear program — that were best left in darkness. By distancing themselves from Iran, by actively providing accurate intelligence to Washington, Moscow might be able to take advantage of the situation, and even provide military assistance that would create and guarantee a Russian presence in the Gulf. And those embarrassing papers would remain out of sight.
But if Tehran had even a fair chance of winning, Russia would benefit to a far greater degree by covertly remaining friends with the current regime. Control of Russia's native Islamic population was part of it, yes, as was the cash flow generated by Iran's purchase of military and nuclear technology.
Of far greater importance, however, was the possibility of a major strategic shift. As the United States pulled out of the Gulf, they would leave behind a power vacuum only partially replaced by the tiny Iranian navy. Russia could capitalize on that, could step in with sales of Russian aircraft, tanks, ships, and submarines that would make all previous sales pale in comparison. Russian influence would grow in the region as well.
It was a long-established if unspoken fact of global realpolitik that he who controlled the waters of the Persian Gulf could dictate to the rest of the world. The United States was very close to achieving that enviable position.
But soon, with luck, Moscow could replace the Americans as lords of the oil-rich Middle East.
It was definitely a goal worth the tremendous risk, and Sergeyev intended to present his view on the matter to his superiors in the most forcible manner possible.
Admiral Mehdi Baba-Janzadeh remained motionless behind his desk for a long time after Sergeyev's departure. The fool. The poor, deluded, godless fool. He had no idea what was in store for his country once Iran emerged triumphant in the coming struggle.
Risk? Of course there was risk! What great endeavor, what heroic effort, lacked all risk, all danger? And what great victory for the cause of Allah, the merciful, the munificent, was won without sacrifice, even martyrdom? The West — and Baba-Janzadeh included Russia within that category — simply did not, simply could not, understand.
And the planners of Operation Azar Bahadur — the Farsi meant "Bold Fire" — had honed the plan to the diamond-keen edge of a scimitar. Even if the Americans won, they would lose.
During the War of the Cities, the eight-year struggle with Iraq, Iran had been forced to accept devastating, inconceivable losses in order to prevail over Saddam Hussein's invasion. Women and children had been recruited to walk ahead of advancing troops in order to clear the approach of land mines, and assaulting Pasdaran units had been forced to scramble over the thickly stacked walls of their own dead to reach the enemy. Iranians knew what sacrifice truly was.
Before the first American war with Iraq, Saddam Hussein had boasted that the coming conflict would be the "Mother of All Battles," and confidently predicted hundreds of thousands of American dead. And indeed, that might have been the outcome had Saddam been a better general. He'd failed, however, by relying on the mass-army tactics he'd employed with less than complete success against Iran, by completely underestimating the superiority of American technology, and by waiting for the Americans to come to him, rather than striking the first blow.
Oh, he'd launched an attack — the abortive attempt at al Khafji that had been handily beaten back at the Saudi border — but that had been more of a probing attack, a tentative feeling-out of American and Saudi defenses.
Baba-Janzadeh had studied the first Iraqi war exhaustively, and he'd made his senior field commanders study its lessons as well. Except for that limited exploration-in-force at al Khafji, Saddam had waited for the Americans to come to him, waited behind his earth berms and fields of land mines and dug-in tanks and static fortifications, assuming that the Americans, when they came, would come that way. Their flanking attack around the western Iraqi defenses and their near-complete encirclement of the Revolutionary Guard had caught Saddam and his generals totally and fatally by surprise.
Iran's military council had no intention of making the same mistakes as had the unlamented Saddam Hussein. Preparations were all but complete, and the first stages were already in motion. At the moment, according to Iranian Intelligence, there were some thirty-four American warships based at Dhahran — the vessels of their Fifth Fleet. At any given time, perhaps a third of these were on patrol — escorting international shipping in and out of the Gulf, suppressing piracy, and operating in support of the Iraqi government.
Against that flotilla — impressive in firepower as it might be — was a true armada, numbering in the hundreds… most of them small craft, light patrol boats, even fishing boats, but all equipped with deadly anti-ship missiles, including the deadly new C-802 missiles acquired from the Chinese.
Iran also now possessed six diesel-electric submarines, three Kilo-class subs purchased from the Russians over the past two decades, and three of the newer Ghadir-class boats, designed and built entirely in Iran.
And finally there were the new Iranian missile forces. The new Faateh A-110 medium-range surface-to-surface missile and the highly accurate updated Shahab-3 together would enable Iran to utterly dominate the entire Gulf. The better-than-1,300-kilometer range of the Shahab-3, in fact, would let Iran strike Israel. Indeed, at recent military parades through Tehran, six of the big solid-fuel rockets had been on prominent display, each with a banner declaring, "We will wipe Israel from the map."
The attacks would be coordinated, with the first strike coming from small craft sneaking in close, and follow-on strikes by surface-to-surface missiles fired from Iranian territory. At the same time, Iranian commandos — the Qods Special Forces — and the Iranian-based arm of al-Qaeda, together would launch simultaneous attacks of sabotage and suicide bombings.
The U.S. Fifth Fleet would find itself under sudden and ferocious attack from all quarters, many of the ships destroyed as they rested in port. Still other attacks would be aimed at the American military base at Dhahar, killing the sailors, soldiers, and Marines of the fleet before they knew what had happened. Missiles and submarines would be used to simultaneously close the Straits of Hormuz; the surviving American warships would be unable to escape, and reinforcements would not be able to enter.
America would be presented with a disaster as potent as the one they'd suffered at Pearl Harbor: their fleet crippled at best, with thousands of casualties at the very least. And this time, Washington would not have the will or the determination they'd found in the aftermath of the Japanese attack.
But the plan's real strength lay in what it would do to rally Islamic support throughout the world. Even if the initial strike were less than completely successful, even if the American fleet escaped the trap at the straits, the mere fact that Iran had struck such a blow would be hailed as an astonishing victory throughout the Islamic world. There would be risings, such risings, risings that would sweep secular governments from power from Ankara and Cairo to Kuala Lumpur, and that might well topple the governments of non-Islamic states as well. Indonesia, the Philippines, the former Soviet states of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Russia herself would be engulfed in the flames of religious jihad.