American marines and paratroopers being sent for potential combat in Iran are preparing to protect themselves against chemical and nuclear leaks, experts have told The National.
Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, whose advanced units have flown from America to Europe, with others already in the Middle East, are supplied with life-saving equipment. The units carry detection systems, gas masks and protective "Mopp" coveralls in case of any operation to take the Strait of Hormuz.
US Marines will be “practising CBRN drills on deck as we speak”, said former officer Jonathan Hackett, referring to the troops of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit training for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear” warfare, who will arrive in the region on the USS Tripoli very soon.
Experts have told The National that the risk of the Iran war causing a chemical or nuclear incident could increase if it continues to escalate or Tehran faces defeat.
There are also concerns that a nuclear incident could occur, with missiles recently landing at sites close to plants in Israel and Iran.
International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi on Thursday warned that bombing around the Bushehr nuclear power plant was a cause for severe concern. Major incidents around the plant posed extreme risks to nuclear safety and the surrounding region, he said.
The regime also has a legacy of processing mustard agent from the Iran-Iraq War in which it used chemical weapons on a mass scale.
Iran asserts its right to a nuclear programme and says the US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons, when it ended the war with Japan in 1945.
Chemical capabilities
Chemical weapons specialist Lennie Phillips, who led the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons fact-finding mission in Syria, said while CIA reports suggested Iran did not have traditional chemical weapons, it was not beyond its capabilities to develop mustard gas or other weapons.
“Iran has a very well-established chemical and pharmaceutical industry, so if they decide to change to something else it is fairly straightforward to do. So when it comes to the chemical weapons side, I think this is the area of concern.”
He also suggested that “weaponising” the chemicals would be “fairly straightforward”, with them mounted on missiles or drones.
The chemistry of producing nerve agents was “a lot more complex”, with much more time required and the weapons having a limited shelf life.
US planners will understand that “there will be a concern, given Iran's legacy of using chemical weapons”, Mr Hackett said.
“The CBRN unit can also be scaled up in size, but the conventional marine forces will have their CBRN gear and be drilling on it, with 15 seconds to get mask and Mopp on when someone shouts ‘Gas, gas, gas’,” he said.
“As the 31st MEU is steaming into the theatre they're probably doing that on deck of the ship as we speak, because for this type of operation you're planning for the worst-case scenario.”
Syria cache
The Tehran regime is also understood to have a number of chemical weapons that it took from Syria before the fall of Bashar Al Assad's regime
Questions have been raised over the whereabouts of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, which may have been smuggled or sent to Iran before the fall of Mr Al Assad.
“They may well still be on bases somewhere, but it's stronger than hearsay that some of these chemical weapons actually moved eastwards and are now either in Iraq or Iran,” said Mr Phillips.
All of the experts strongly ruled out the use of tactical nuclear weapons by America or Israel.
Nuclear accident
But there are concerns that by accident or design parts of a nuclear station could be struck “so the conflict poses a serious nuclear safety risk to all those facilities around the Gulf,” added Darya Dolzikova, a nuclear expert at the Rusi think tank.
“It's a very small region, relatively speaking, with a lot of missiles and drones flying around at the moment.”
In the past week, munitions have landed close to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant and a similar site in Dimona, Israel.
There are also concerns over the potential for America to extract the 440kg of Iran’s highly enriched uranium from the country, and the dangers of moving it.
Red line
Experts have also suggested that Washington should make it clear to Tehran that it would face severe consequences if it carried out a chemical or similar attack.
“There needs to be a Trump red line, which means something, which would be the most effective way of stopping these weapons being used,” said chemical warfare specialist Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. “My concern is that if the Iranians run out of road, what do they do then, because this is in their psyche from the Iran-Iraq War.”
The threat of a country that feels it has nothing to lose had to be taken seriously, agreed Ms Dolzikova. “It'd be an act of desperation if it did, but this war is escalating as we speak,” she said.
