WarSclerotic

Hagel: Despite shrinking Mideast footprint, US can stop Iran | The Times of Israel.

US Defense Secretary insists region remains ‘top defense priority’ for Obama administration, and that ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks at the Washington Institute for Near East policy on Thursday. (photo credit: image capture from YouTube video)

NEW YORK – The United States will still be able to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon despite a shrinking US military footprint in the region and looming defense budget cuts, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel asserted in a talk in Washington Thursday.

“The Middle East remains a top defense priority” for the Obama administration, Hagel said, but emphasized that the “most enduring and effective solutions to the challenges facing the region are political, not military.”

“Even as the number of US troops in the region has decreased since the end of the Iraq war, we’ve made a determined effort to position high-end air, missile defense and naval [assets]” in the region, the defense secretary told a symposium of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC.

“Great powers use all of their tools, not just 11 carriers, or carrier battle groups, or air wings,” Hagel said.

The US forces that will remain at the end of the US drawdown, including “the significant US military presence” in Kuwait, Persian Gulf states and elsewhere in the region, will mean the American military will “have the capabilities required” to deal with a potential Iranian nuclear standoff, Hagel vowed.

“Our capabilities in the region will far exceed those that were in place on September 11, 2001,” he noted, and added, “If I didn’t think we had those capabilities, or weren’t going to have them because of the budget challenge, I’d have no choice but to go to the Congress and the president and say [so].”

Even with reduced budgets –- the Pentagon has asked for some $527 billion in its baseline budget for 2014, excluding funds for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — “we can protect the interests of this country with that budget and do the things the American people expect us to do, that we’re committed to do.”

Hagel interspersed his comments about a continued US military presence in the Middle East with repeated references to a burgeoning anti-Iran alliance among states in the region. In recent visits to Persian Gulf countries, he said, “concerns over Iran’s support for the Assad regime, its destabilizing activities [in the Gulf] and its nuclear program were at the top of the agenda.”

He noted US agreements to sell more modern fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and a recent joint demining exercise in the Persian Gulf. These activities reflected a “new arrangement [that] ensures we’re coordinating effectively against Iran,” he said.

Iran’s activities “all pose a clear threat to the United States, to Israel and to the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the wider world,” he added, and vowed the US “will continue to lead” international efforts to end the regime’s nuclear ambitions.

Hagel affirmed the Obama administration’s oft-repeated view that Israel “is America’s closest friend and ally in the Middle East,” and noted US support for its military in fields ranging from missile and rocket defense to Israel’s participation “as the only Middle East nation” in the Joint Strike Fighter program. He took special note of a new arms sales agreement announced last month that will grant Israel advanced missiles, refueling jets and other technologies.

American security cooperation with Arab states would benefit Israel, Hagel added. On his visit to the Jewish state, he had “emphasized” to Israeli leaders “that strong United States security relationships with Arab nations, including particularly Egypt and Jordan and our partners in the Gulf, are not only in America’s strategic interests; they’re also in Israel’s security interest,” he said.

Israeli and American leaders have argued in recent months over the timetable for a possible military solution to the Iranian nuclear program should diplomatic, economic and other peaceful measures prove ineffective. Yet while he asserted that the US was committed to stymieing Iranian nuclear ambitions, “As I emphasized during the trip [to Israel last month], Israel is a sovereign nation. Like all sovereign nations, it has the right to defend itself.”

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