Why I don't worry about A2/AD (the PG version)

Pair of FT stories.

First is front-pager on how the U.S. defense industry is cleaning up on sales to PG Sunni states worried about Iran's reach for the bomb, with jets, radar and missile defense orders leading the way. While the short term fear is plain enough:  a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran could trigger Iran's retaliations against whomever and they want to be ready. But longer term, we have dueling anti-access, area-denial strategies, with our local allies buying what we're selling: ways to penetrate Iran's alleged A2/AD capacity (mostly fixated on US naval assets in the Gulf) and ways to set up competing versions of their own.

Point being, I'm not a big believer in A2/AD working as a peacetime influencer.  When the Sovs made that effort with us during the Cold War, it was all about the actual fight, and didn't add anything to Soviet ability to freak anybody out and thus influence them.  The nukes they fielded did plenty of that.

Iran won't be getting to any serious nuke total for a very long time, and they're unlikely to make it very high without suffering some debilitating fight with its regional neighbors, so their version of A2/AD (the short version is to say anything that puts our carriers at serious and doesn't allow us to park off your coast and do sorties to our hearts' content) logically presents more ambition (i.e., they really hope to cover some of their own vulnerabilities here).  But deliver any serious peacetime influence? Ain't going to happen. Too tight a space and too many enemies with money to spend and a big friend to make the sales. Plus, no matter what we put in the Gulf, we can reach out with long-range bombers and pretty much do what we want with Iran, from all sorts of distant and untouchable friendly bases.

So what great lord-it-over-them influence does Iran get with its A2/AD and nuke efforts?  Nothing really.  The regional balancing is natural enough and there's no superpower standing behind Iran ready to bail it out if the fight really does come.  Plus (reference 2), a nakedly assertive Iran (i.e., when it's anti-Israeli, aren't-we-Muslims-in-this-all-together rhetoric is stripped away) only buys its co-religionists throughout the region a lot more persecution.  

So Iran's local influence goes down and ours goes up--A2/AD denied.

And it happens in such a nice way for our defense industry facing lower acquisitions back home.  Honestly, it's made to order--unless you're hoping to use the whole A2/AD to get the Pentagon to buy your gear back here. Because the more we arm up our friends, Nixon Doctrine style (shoe not being on Iran's foot this time), the less assets we need to keep in region and the more likely it is that, if we so choose, we'll rain iron from significant, out-of-touch distances.