"How/Why would Russia invade the Middle East?" Topic

I am trying to think of a future scenario where a resurgent Russia decides to invade and capture Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in order to control the oil. I'm trying to make the scenario belieavable, and that is where I am having difficulty. Russia is friends with Iran, currently so I just don't see them invading them.

I'm thinking of having a revolution sweep through Iran like the one happening in Libya where the current Iranian govt is swept from power and a more pro-western one is swept into power thus making the Russians very unhappy therefore they invade.

I would appreciate any suggestions or ideas. Thanks!

Russia is friends with Iran, currently so I just don't see them invading them.

Countries do not have friends, they have interests.

Have Al Qaeda nuke Russias own oilfields. Why? Just because…
Oh, heck. Russia has its own Muslim minorities with no great love for Mother Russia.

That way the Russkis both need oil, and have a grudge. Potent combination.

Far tangent, but the Russian and Arab oil magnates are having somewhat of an escalating competition to see who ca build the biggest, most luxurious "Mega-Yacht" Maybe a terrorist/sabotage action against one (or more) of those ships could lead to a bigger conflict…

Wasn't the background plot behind Red Storm Rising that the Soviets planned to invade the Middle East and take control of the oil fields after one of their major oilfield was destroyed in Khazakstan by some Islamic Terrorists. However they needed to prevent the west from stopping them by starting up a war in Europe to keep them occupied.

Let's say Iran (or Syria) is caught red-handed supplying WMD to the Chechen terrorists and the Chechens use Sarin Nerve gas in the Moscow subways causing mass casualties.

The Russians, incensed and under "Strong man" Putin invade the mideast to "Cut out this cancer" and, oh! Those are nice oilfields you have there! And oh LOOK! A nice Port you have there we can base our naval units at to control the Straits of Hormuz!

Because they don't have enough of a problem with their own religious extremists?

Only Warlock – I like your scenario. Never thought about that.

I was going to do the Red Storm Rising scenario, but wanted something different.

So far in my scenario NATO no longer exists. They broke up, but the US, England and Germany retain a mutual defense treaty. The US also signed a secret agreement with Saudi to come to their defense in case of attack and also a secret agreement with Egypt that allows the staging of America forces in their country.

More questions:

How many forces would you think Russia would use in order to take over Iran, Iraq and Saudi? I did a comparison size of those three countries over the US and they comprise almost half the size of the US so I figure the Russian forces would have to be substantial in order to garrison all three of those countries and be prepared to defeat any US led forces.

Yeah

Russians get so good at exterminating muslims that they try to make an export indistry out of it.

I keep telling you guys that the cheapest way to get oil is to BUY the stuff.

It works like tis:

Abdul is a stinking little dictator, he has oil
He sells the oil for money
He uses the money to buy fancy gear for his secret police
They kill imprison and torture his dissidents.

Everyone is happy.

Military expeditions are enormously expensive – even today, natural resources arent.

Warlock' s scenario is good. But what about a scenario where the current regime in Iran folds under a revolt like we just saw in Libya. Now add to to that this new regime starts to rearm Georgia and signs a mutual defense treaty.

I read that as Middle Earth for some reason at first. That would be a bird of a different feather altogether.

Russia has always been looking for a warm water port. I could see the supporting Chechen rebels as a good excuse to break into the middle east as Only Warlock said.

I know nothing about current Russian forces, but do they have the military capability to even take out one of those countries let alone all three (add to which your US agreement with the Saudis)?

Also how do they get there? Russia shares no land borders with any of those three countries

Russia shares no land borders with any of those three countries

The former USSR did. I do not see that as a problem.
Hitler did not see all those "former" Russian territories as an impediment to land warfare.
Nor would the USSR have seen the lack of a common border with Germany as a problem in the event of a Cold War gone hot.

I'm thinking of having a revolution sweep through Iran like the one happening in Libya where the current Iranian govt is swept from power and a more pro-western one is swept into power thus making the Russians very unhappy therefore they invade.

Why not have the Russians have the change of outlook? That way, you can keep any US involvement somewhat at arms length, since neither side will be friendly to them.

John, the former USSR shared a border with Iran. To get to Iraq you have to go through Iran. To get to Saudi arabia you have to go through Iran and Iraq.

In a straight line it is >800 miles from Tehran to Riyadh.

Double that to get from anywhere the Russians could mass to Riyadh. Add another 500 miles to get to the south of the country.

2100 miles. Moscow to Paris is 1544 miles in a straight line.

Maps too often distort our view of distances.

Also Russia currently does not have the relative military capability compared with USSR 30-40 years ago.

Iran is the three times the size of Afghanistan, add Iraq and SA and you have ten times the territory and these countries have a much better military than Afghanistan did. Even without US intervention it is a non-starter in the near future. Limiting it to Iran…..

Warning wikipedia link: link

If this is correct both the UK and France have bigger military budgets than Russia.

Some people say USA military is stretched with Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is not an occupying force in either country AND it has a military budget more than 10x higher than Russia.

Great ideas! Azerbaijan is a gateway to Iran. In my scenario I am trying to chose between Russia invading Azerbaijan or signing an agreement with Azerbaijan allowing Russian forces to stage there.

This scenario is taking place in the future where the US has reorganized from divisions to regimental size systems. The Russians have also done away with their division system and have their units organized into brigades (I remember reading about the Russians want to do this on Wiki)

I'm thinking about having the Iranian govt overthrown and the new govt funding and helping Chechen rebels like Only Warlock suggested.

The Russians don't really want to occupy all of Iran, Iraq and Saudi they just want the oil and control of the ports so that is pretty much their goals. I see them defending those areas and pretty much ignoring the rest of the country.

Some people say USA military is stretched with Iraq and Afghanistan

Oh, they only say that because they're afraid we'll invade a few more countries. I'm looking for an excuse to game the Invasion of Lichtenstein, after all. Do they have oil?

From Azerbaijan to the oilfields of Iran means fighting accross the Zagros Mountains.

Lots of peaks above 3000m, with the Caspian plain being maximally 50km wide (in places a few km wide). Tough to get off the plains and make real progress let alone hundreds of miles of it.

The oilfields and ports are all around the Persian gulf. If they are defending only those areas they would have a thousand mile supply line across the Zagros.

Should make the Russian occupation of Afghanistan look like a picnic.

I'm trying to make the scenario believable, and that is where I am having difficulty.

Yeah, that 'believable" is the problem.
They have plenty of reasons to want the land, but they'd have to "resurge" an awful lot before they have the logistics and projection capability to go for it.

Going after Saudi brings us back to the bad old "strategic nuclear exchange" sort of days, too…
-Kle.

Diadochi – In the scenario, once the Iranian govt implodes so does their military. I was thinking about having the Iranians fight a civil war where most of their equipment is destroyed or in disrepair thus allowing the Russians to cut through what defenses they can manage to build up.

I wargame with 1/600 scale micro armor vehicles and currently have 17,000 Russian vehicles. I have them broken down into 72 brigades which contain 180 vehicles each and the remaining vehicles are in seperate battalions. I also have approx 1000 Russian jets Mig-27s, Mig-29s, SU-25s and 300 Hinds.

My plan is to use just part of this force for the initial invasion/defense while the remaining forces are used as security along their supply lines.

This scenario is set in the future like around 2020. The US has pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan by this time and the American public has no stomach for anymore war…until they see their oil supply threatened. The US will not get involved in the initial war between Russia and Iran because it will see Iran as pretty much deserving it after they gave WMDs to the Chechen terrorist, but once they see the Russians going after Iraq and Saudi then they will start up their war machine.

Anyway that is it so far. I love all the ideas and thanks for all the comments.

So instead of invading Iran, how about Russia joins Iran in an effort to take over Iraq and Saudi Arabia (and the Gulf States) and therefore control the world oil market. That's certainly far more believable (and with Iran being the most populous of the three states with the most diverse set of terrain, they would represent certain difficulties in an invasion just from sheer numbers and geography).

You make the scenario so that Iran and Russia agree that after the war that they will split the revenues from the oil and control the output. They use their combine nuclear option as a hedge against outside interference and thus you have an interesting conventional scenario that is much more plausible with interesting side options.

What John said in his first post. Have your Iranians supporting dissident Moslem factions in Russia covertly. The Russians find out and get irked.

Lookingglassman, that is a lot of resurge (having spent an evening finding out about Russian armed forces).

If you have 1000 Russian jets that is roughly the size of the entire fighter+ground attack of the current Russian airforce.

17000 Russian vehicles is about half of the current active military vehicles (MBT, APC, artillery etc) combined.

…and the Russians are currently cutting the size of their armed forces.

Russian military spending (on Wikipedia) is listed as 4.3% GDP. Russia is not a rich country (GDP is below India and only en par with Spain). It cannot afford a resurge. All it has is a lot of manpower. Human wave tactics with a mainly conscript army?

TGerrisen's suggestion looks more plausible if you are setting it as soon in the future as 2020. It gets the Russians to the action quickly, no supply route problems and Iran + Russia forces >> Iraq + Saudi Arabia forces so a VERY sizeable US input needed.

TGerritsen – Originally I had the Russians/Iranians forming an alliance to do just that. But decided to just go with the Russians going after everything themselves. It is defficult trying to manage all kinds of different nations during the wargame so I just decided to make the Russians the "boogeyman" so to speak.

I am trying to make them in 2020 what Hitler's Germany was to the world in 1940 – Led by a dictator who is power hungry and has a huge military to wield.

I figure invading and taking over three major oil producing countries would be good enough for the Russians. Kuwait and the other Gulf States will be pretty much left alone by them as long as they don't make too much noise.

Diadochi – I see what you mean. Two of the Russian Armies are reserve formations with old equipment in them. Russia is poor, I was using their own oilfields as a means for them to get extra cash, especially from China and their rationale from invading the Middle East and seizing Iran, Iraq and Saudi is the money from that oil will make up fo rany money they may have to spend in order to fund this operation.

The US, of course will get involoved, but it will take awhile for them to mobilize and this will be the first "real war" they will fight in a long time. This won't be isurgents planting IEDs in the road or sniping, but Russian tank units equipped with T-90s and T-80s along with the crushsing artillery support going at it with US, British and German troops.

I have about 5000 US, British and German vehicles. I know people want to say the M1A2 has the technological edge against a T-80 or even a T-90, but how well will a dug in M1A2 Abrams company survive when the Russians are pounding their positions with rockets and artillery? Those tanks that do survive may be in bad shape afterwards and all the "geewhiz" electronic stuff they use like the CITV may be useless.

I do not see them having the military capability to launch any of the invasions. They are not the USSR of legend. They barely fund the military as mentioned above. Their biggest industries are drug dealing and hookers.

I am trying to make them in 2020 what Hitler's Germany was to the world in 1940 – Led by a dictator who is power hungry and has a huge military to wield.

Good luck with that. A more likely scenario comes from chaos in the Middle East / Persia without any direct Russian influence. The region is a tinderbox ready to ignite, and has been sparking quite a bit lately. Western politicians are ignorant, naive, creatures looking only for reelection. I have been saying this since it began, the "Arab Spring" in the not too distant long term will end badly for the West and the US. Mark my words. There is your scenario.

We might be dragged into being involved. But Russia will not be involved, unless hookers are needed. Nothing to do with oil. Only politics and religion, which are one and the same in many Persian/ME countries.

Lookingglassman, have fun with the game

The problem is that this is counter to the historical Russian strategy for expansionism.

Typically, what they do is develop a strong, paternalistic relationship with a country, then send in "advisors", and then later establish a puppet government. When the Russian army arrives to formally annex the region, it's already long been a protectorate. When/if the target resists, Russia stirs up discontent fueled by ethnic strife. They've been doing this since the Czars and as recently as Georgia, and have little reason to stop.

They see strength on their border as a threat, and so work to destabilize their neighbors. Then, facing instability (also undesirable) they take more and more control. It's conquest on automatic.

So while staging all-out invasions certainly happens with Russia, it's hard to imagine them doing so in this era. Your best bet is to somehow eliminate Europe, the USA and China as potential interlopers.

An economic collapse in either the USA or Europe would probably spread from one to the other, and could lead to political collapses as well. Google around and you'll find some really bad worst case scenarios. China, bereft of markets for its exports, has a political crisis that paralyzes it. Russia, seeing a fleeting 5 year window when none of the other powers can intervene, makes a grab for Iran (and only Iran). Their oil reserves insulate them from a global currency collapse (to some extent).

They can claim to the Arab bloc that they're removing the instability stemming from Iran. Having helped the Iranians with their nuclear program, it would be just like Russia to invade under the pretext of stopping them from going nuclear. Especially if Russia jumps in just as Iran is in a conflict with the Arab countries, Russia might have just enough of a thin veneer of justification to keep the Arabs from joining the fight. Of course, realizing that Russia owning Iran means curtains for them, the Arab countries enter the war anyway. So then you have Russia's reason for biting off so much more than it can chew-- a miscalculation that they'd be fighting the persians and arabs one at a time rather than both at once, driven by a timetable coming from what they know is a brief historical opportunity to avoid retaliation by the other Great Powers.

Keep in mind that you might well see Israel join in. They're not fools-- they can't beat Russia on their own, and an Indian Ocean port is all fine and good, but Russia's been trying to a route to the Mediterranean for centuries. If they can't have the Dardanelles, why not snap up Lebanon instead?

Just to be clear, I think for your scenario to work, you really don't need to work up a pretext for why Russia would invade. Russia will take a resentful satellite over a friend any day, and a newly conquered province over a satellite.

What you need is a plausible reason why they do a full-bore invasion rather than conquest by subversion, and a rationale for why the West and China won't get involved. (The latter need not actually work out-- it's just that Russia won't invade if they think someone else will intervene.)

Consider Operation Countenance, the Anglo-Soviet iunvasion of Iran in the fall of 1941 to secure the oilfields (the US got in on it later).

Allen

Thanks for all the ideas I really appreciate them. I am now rethinking my scenario.

I originally had the Iranians and Russians as allies to go against Iraq and Saudi, but what kept nagging at my mind was the quality of the Iranian Army. I keep thinking in a war against the West the Iranian Army would eventually ending up folding, thus just leaving the Russians sort of what Italy did in WWII. I don't know though. Perhaps they are tougher than the Iraqi Army was and would hang in there for the long run.

I have been searching the net on the Iranian Army's effectiveness, but most of the stuff I run into is concerning the 8 years war with Iraq which doesn't give me a comfy feeling for them standing besides their Russian allies in a stand up fight against the US.

As for China, I was toying with the ideal of making the invasion a joint Russian-Chinese operation, but couldn't figure out how to even deploy Chinese forces into the region other then them passing through Pakistan or Afghanistan and I figured that wasn't going to happen and they do not have a navy capable of deploying large forces that far away.

Right now I am pretty much stuck.

kyoteblue – Sounds good to me.

It's based during the Cold War era, but if you haven't read Harold Coyle's Sword Point, I'd recommend it. It revolves around a Soviet invasion of Iran with US intervention against the Iranian's wishes.

… a coup attempt in Turkmenistan. Russian and Kazakh Airborne units are sent in to aid the local Turkmen units. They are attacked by unknown military units and require the support of a Kazakh motor rifle brigade to overcome the resistance. A supporting Russian frigate in the Caspian sea is torpedoed. At the same time, there is a coordinated bombing campaign across the Caucasus and Moscow.

The FSB discovers proof that the Iranian Pasdaran is behind the campaign. The Iranian President denies involvement and enters into a defensive treaty with Saudi Arabia and Iraq. ….

Dan – I liked Coyle's book, but since Russia and Iran are "friends" now I gotta think of a way to make them hate each other. I'm looking at the Iran coup-gives dirty bomb-to chechen terrorist angle. Perhaps new Iranian govt is really crazy and sees Russia as being as bad as the US, but easier to penetrate therefore they give a dirty bomb to rebels to explode in Moscow in order to refine their delivery system hoping to do the same to the US in the future.

Ok, so this might be crazy, but how about this? Iran erupts in an 'Arab Spring' like disturbance that gets violent. Russia, using China, presses the UN to allow them to intervene to stabilize the country. The televised and youtubed leaks of violence has the West in a tizzy for action, but none of them want to commit. Along comes the Russian bear to play cowboy and invoke peace at their behest. The Russians start out being 'the good guy.'

The Russians come in, impose stability (with the help of the Iranian opposition), and Iran is taken as a staging base with little actual invasion required. From there they decide to take Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Thus, what starts as a UN request becomes the Russians ably playing the world to get what they want.

TGerritsen – I like that ideal! Thanks!

After reading all the great comments I am thinking about revising my scenario to something like this:

Israel/US jets and cruise missiles attack Iranian nuclear sites. Iran retailates, but there is only so much it can do without risking Israel launching nukes on it.

Months later Iran, Russia and China sign a treaty called the Middle East Defense Pact in response to this attack. Similar to NATO this agreement states if one of those countries is attacked then the others will come to their defense.

Pakistan's govt falls to hardline extremist and China, worried about Pakistani nukes so close to their land, invades and takes over the country.

Iran wants to "punish Iraq and Saudi Arabia" for allowing US/Israeli overflights of their lands when they attacked Iran (The Saudis actually allow US/Israeli jets to refuel at a Saudi military airfield before making their final approach to their targets in Iran) therefore they propose to their new buddies the Russians and Chinese to "assist" them in bringing to "justice those countries that have shown to be determined to inflame the region" or some such crazy excuse just to invade.

The Russians and Chinese -seeing a potential to control more oil and getting port facilities in the Gulf agree and there you have it a combined Iran-Russian-Chinese attack force invading Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Lookingglassman…My 2 cents..I don't want to be "that guy" but…I would like to see Chinese combined arms columns moving through Tibet to attack the Pakistani Army (K2 would make one heck of an OP). I think the Pakistani nukes would no longer be an issue, as they would have been expended defending their border..The Russian Army will have no power projection capability to speak of for decades..the bear is an angry little cubby and will be for a long long while..China would be forced to sustain it's forces over land…yada yada..there is no reasistic scenario for a HIC with all these guys. So if you want to see Type 99's, T90's, M1A2's and Merkavas duke it out, abandon reality…

My suggestion might be:

The current and future administrations are successful in gutting the US military in the post-Iraq War world. Continuing escalation of the "Sino-Korean Border Crisis" of 2025 drawing the focus of the United States and it's Pacific Allies away from a Middle East where the reputation of a Sunni dominated Iraqi successor government generates far less sympathy (and oil) for the US that the current Iraq administration. The Iranian Government (with PLA military and political backing) develops an agreement with Kurdish Factions, supporting the idea of an independant Kurdistan (but not including Iranian territories and supported by Quds units) which errupts into warfare in Northern Iraq. Iraq appeals to the US and Europe, which are stymied in the UN, and which the US dismisses as "an internal civil war". With the US engaged in a land war in Korea and blocked in the UN, Iran pulls a reverse '80 on Iraq and invades to "secure the rights of the oppressed Shia Minority" (and the southern oilfileds). Iraq responds with a demand that the US intervene as required by treaty, the US grudgingly complies with a air/ground counter-attack by the theater HRF based in Kuwait and the gulf region. Saudi Arabia (with 300+ M1A2's and 200+ Leopard A7's)and the Gulf States weigh in to support the Iraqis (read Sunnis). Even though NATO is tied up policing North Africa the Brits and Poles leap in (because, lets face it, those guys rock)…..add a Chinese Airborne unit (volunteers of course), Russian Advisors with Iranain units..(hey service after the sale of course..)some lager, shake well and serve. Arab vs. Persian Battle Royal…everybody who is anybody is in the game…

Just have Russia ally with Israel and they sign a pact to carve up the region between them…