The US navy has announced that it will be pulling its sole aircraft carrier out of the Gulf this autumn – leaving the region without a naval strike force for the first time in seven years.
The absence of an aircraft carrier in the Gulf just as the Iran nuclear deal is expected to come into effect this autumn has drawn criticism from some US legislators.
But analysts say the short-term gap is not militarily significant and the United States still has a huge amount of firepower stationed in the region to deter Tehran and carry out air strikes against ISIL.
The Obama administration has used its naval power in the Gulf, spearheaded by the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, as a crucial element of its bid to reassure GCC allies over its commitment to countering Tehran. In April it deployed the carrier to block Iranian ships from delivering weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen. Until recently the Pentagon required the US navy to keep at least one carrier in the Gulf at all times, with an overlap period between any replacement.
But that requirement was replaced with new guidelines that allowed periods of no carrier presence. The USS Theodore Roosevelt will leave the Gulf sometime in October, and be replaced with another carrier about two months later.
Military officials said the gap was a result of badly needed maintenance across the US navy’s 10 carriers, combined with strains on military budgets and a growing demand for carriers in the Asia Pacific, where maritime tensions with China have increased.
“Due to a lot of maintenance and other rotational things the navy is doing with aircraft carriers, they just didn’t have one to relieve Theodore Roosevelt on time,” said an officer with US central command (Centcom), which coordinates military policy in the Middle East. “They notified us of that and we have the plans in place to mitigate for this”, he said, adding that “we will have an aircraft
carrier back in the Gulf” soon.
“I wouldn’t say that just because we don’t have one that that lowers or changes the necessity to have one,” the Centcom officer said.
It is unclear whether the Pacific will be prioritised in the future and whether there may be more frequent absences of aircraft carriers in the Gulf. Where to deploy carriers “is always continuously being assessed by the combatant commanders,” said a US navy official. “I don’t know what they’re going to come up with for requirements for the future.”
There have been such gaps before, but not for at least seven years. Meanwhile, the gap scheduled to begin in October comes at a time of heightened anxiety in the Gulf over the implications of the lifting of sanctions on Iran and US commitments towards the region.
The move has been criticised by some in Washington. “We have 11 active nuclear aircraft carriers today in the United States navy,” said retired Admiral James Stavridis, the supreme allied commander of Nato until 2013, counting a carrier that is to be inducted soon.
“It is hard for me to understand why we cannot manage a fleet of that size to maintain an aircraft carrier at all times in regions as dangerous as the Arabian Gulf,” he said in a recent radio interview.