STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Sean MacFarland has been listening with us. He is a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, and he knows the Middle East, having served in Iraq and elsewhere. General, good morning.
SEAN MACFARLAND: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Thanks for joining us early from Texas. What capabilities does the 82nd Airborne have that other troops might not?
MACFARLAND: Well, the 82nd Airborne is the Army's premier rapid deployment force. It has unmatched strategic mobility. It can deploy anywhere around the world on short notice by air and can be there in a matter of hours or days if called upon.
INSKEEP: Is it normal in the 21st century that they would - when you say deployed by air, that they would parachute in the way that they did on D-Day, or is there some other way?
MACFARLAND: Well, they can parachute in. That's what their name implies, obviously. They can also deploy in other ways. They can air-land. They can air-assault by helicopter, or they can move over land by - on wheeled vehicles. So they're a very flexible force in that regard.
INSKEEP: So if we imagine seizing Kharg Island or some other target in the Persian Gulf region, I guess we would assume they are placed in a U.S. military base - of which there are several - and they fly in from there. Is that correct?
MACFARLAND: That's certainly a possibility. Yes.
INSKEEP: There are other possibilities?
MACFARLAND: Well, I mean, they could deploy directly from the United States if called upon, although in this case, I think that they would most likely move to a forward or intermediate staging base. And once they're there, then they give the theater commander, you know, various options, and at the same time, they impose dilemmas on the Iranians.
INSKEEP: Now, we don't know that Kharg Island is the target or that there's any target that's been specified, but you just heard an analyst call this militarily challenging to seize Kharg Island. Suppose you were the commander. Suppose you were told that's the strategic purpose, to seize and hold this island. What are the challenges?
MACFARLAND: Well, obviously, the challenges were, as stated by your previous guest, that, you know, their - the closer you are to the enemy, the closer you are to their short-range weapons, which, you know, they have in quantities. So the calculus that would go into that, for the planning to mitigate all of those risks to the force and to the mission, would be front and center in the whole planning process.
INSKEEP: Is there also a challenge in that the enemy may know that you're coming? They've certainly heard a lot about Kharg Island. There are reports that they're adding extra fortifications.
MACFARLAND: Yes. Well, that's absolutely a factor. And that would be something that the commander would try to take into account and either mitigate through deception or going someplace where they're not expected. You know, so there - that kind of goes to the point where having a force like that on the ground gives the commander various options and creates dilemmas for the Iranian forces that they're going to have to take into account.
INSKEEP: And again, we should emphasize we don't know where they're going, if they're going anywhere. But wherever they might go, here's my next question - is it harder to hold a place over time when under enemy fire than it is to seize it in the first place?
MACFARLAND: The - I guess the standard answer to something like that would be, it depends. What I will say is that it's a lot harder to take something away once it's been seized and held by ground forces. It creates an entirely new set of facts on the ground. So, you know, once we - if we do decide to seize a critical asset of some kind with ground troops, then the Iranians would then be put in the position of having to generate enough force and local overmatch to take that back. And that would be a tremendous challenge for them, I think. So that's one of the great advantages of having a deployable ground force like the 82nd or part of the 82nd on the ground, is that the Iranians have to be prepared to do something like that.
INSKEEP: OK. So I was wondering about the difficulty of being constantly under fire. But you're telling me, no...
MACFARLAND: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...This is actually hard for the Iranians. They will have difficulty dislodging an American force.
MACFARLAND: Well, that's right. I mean, there's challenges on both sides, right? Yes. We would have to have sufficient force protection to protect our troops. And the Iranians would have to then decide what they want to do about it. Do they destroy their own critical asset, or do they - in the process of trying to take it back, or just deny its use to the U.S.?
INSKEEP: General MacFarland, pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.
MACFARLAND: Good talking to you, Steve.
INSKEEP: He's a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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