An intriguing coincidence has developed in recent weeks regarding threats made by Iran and those by North Korea. Even if this conjunction occurred randomly rather than by design, the net result is the same: the US might find itself confronting two fronts in two diverse and far apart geographical regions simultaneously.
Operationally, were these countries’ aggressive steps intentionally synchronized, their aim would be to stretch US forces thin.
Such a scenario is hardly fanciful. First, the Iran-North Korea relationship is anchored in a shared ideology of what Pyongyang defines as “frustrating the imperialist powers.” This common front produced extensive cooperation in the development of missile and nuclear technologies. Thus, it was variously reported that Iranian scientists have attended North Korea’s nuclear tests.
A UN report released last year said missile collaboration between the two countries “included the transfer of critical parts, with the most recent shipment taking place in 2020.” Pyongyang has been even described as the “Home Depot” for Iran’s missile program, in effect assuring that any technological advancement in launching long-range delivery vehicles of one state would bode well for the other.
Second, the scheme to stretch US forces thin was not only conceived years before, but also put into action. For example, on August 19, 1981, two Libyan Su-22s fired upon two US F-14s and were subsequently shot down off the Libyan coast in the Gulf of Sidra. Tripoli expressed concern that the aerial engagement might be the harbinger of a planned invasion of Libya.
On August 26, 1981, for the first time ever, North Korea fired a SAM-2 at a US SR-71 reconnaissance plane flying over international waters. The SR-71’s operational ceiling was such as to make the unprecedented launch of the surface-to-air missile a nominal threat – a fact that caused much head-scratching in Washington as to Pyongyang’s intentions.
A clue came in March 1983. While welcoming Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega to North Korea, Kim Il Sung (Kim Jong Un’s grandfather) declared, “If the peoples of the revolutionary countries of the world put pressure on and deal blows at US imperialism in all places where it stretches its talons of aggression, they will make it powerless and impossible to behave as dominator any longer.”
“If the peoples of the revolutionary countries of the world put pressure on and deal blows at US imperialism in all places where it stretches its talons of aggression, they will make it powerless and impossible to behave as dominator any longer.”
Kim Il Sung
Col. Muammar Gaddafi, then Libya’s leader, publicly endorsed this scheme when he stated on March 2, 1984, “We must force America to fight on 100 fronts all over the earth… Through the peoples’ war of liberation, we can force America to fight on all fronts.”
North Korea's rocket barrage
Presently, US military leaders must have been concerned that coinciding with Pyongyang’s unprecedented firing of a barrage of 30 ballistic missiles in 48 hours – including one for the first time past the Northern Limit Line (a de facto maritime inter-Korean border) and three launched toward Japan (apparently one of which was an intercontinental ballistic missile) – warnings came from Saudi Arabia of an impending Iranian attack.
The Wall Street Journal reported on November 1 that Saudi officials said that in addition to Saudi Arabia, Iran is also looking to strike Erbil (the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq), where US troops are stationed. The warnings were credible enough.
The Washington Post reported on November 5 that the US Central Command launched warplanes from bases in the Persian Gulf toward Iran in an apparent bid to deter Tehran.
A SIMILAR pattern emerged the previous month. It is of interest that what Reuters labeled, on October 14, the “unprecedented frequency of North Korea’s missile launches,” coincided with Iran’s unparalleled 12-day offensive against Kurdish areas in northern Iraq. Moreover, it was as if both were bent on creating the maximum provocation and drawing the US’s attention to their military undertakings.
For its part, Pyongyang issued official and repeated declarations calling attention to its missile “tests” as including tactical nuclear simulations of “wiping out enemies.”
North Korea also punctuated its “tests” with an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes preemptive nuclear attacks over a variety of loosely defined crisis situations.
Concomitantly, Iran publicly stated that its actions against Kurdistan were aimed at Washington, since the latter was the hand behind the “Kurdish-instigated” unrest in the country. Tehran also took measures to magnify and louden the scale of its military offensive.
Iranian drones challenge US
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on September 28 that 73 ballistic missiles had been fired at Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. The Iranian News Agency added that the IRGC’s ground forces also used “dozens” of suicide drones.
As if this was not enough the US Central Command said on September 28 that it had to scramble an F-15 jet fighter to shoot down an Iranian drone on its way to Erbil, adding that the drone appeared to pose a threat to US personnel in the area.
It is important to stress that while both Iran and North Korea have cited independent reasons and aims for their belligerent moves, these rationales, even if authentic, do not necessarily obviate the two countries’ strategic interest in stretching US forces thin.
Tehran and Pyongyang are keenly aware of the impact that a challenge to Washington’s military reach by one has on the other’s ability to “resist bullying and intimidation by imperialists.”
For example, a turnkey strategy to stretch US forces thin is likely to assure Tehran that Washington would be less inclined to preempt its nuclear program militarily; it estimates such an offensive will surely trigger a crisis on the Korean Peninsula and beyond.
The net impact of such a strategic tie therefore would be to transform both the Iranian and North Korean hostility to America from regional to global threats.
Moreover, the US response to their provocations has usually involved putting its forces in the theater on alert, or dispatching naval and air assets to assure regional allies.
An example is the ordering of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan back to the waters off the Korean Peninsula a day after North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan on October 3, or the just-announced deployment of B-1B bombers to Guam.
These must have convinced Kim and the mullahs that they do have the capacity to divert, or tie down, American military resources.
Lastly, given the deepening relations between these two countries and Russia in the wake of the protracted Ukraine conflict, it can be expected that new tests of the US military’s multi-front war posture will emerge shortly, as it is all but certain that Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking intensely to punish Washington for its continued support for Kyiv.
The writer is a strategic analyst and the author of books, articles and op-eds on national security issues.