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Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull
Then Soviet get the bright idea to take Iran and to cut oil supplies to West Europe, China and Japan. US and UK decide to send units to the Middle East to prevent the Soviet from reaching the Persian Gulf Coast and closing the straits that the oil tankers have to travel through. For some strange reason Pakistan and India start shooting each other, especially when the Soviet move one Army from Afghanistan into Iran to help that Front out from that direction with the hopes of getting to the location to close the straits. In effect drawing weapons supplies that were coming into Afghanistan over land from Pakistan off.
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When you start talking India/Pakistan, only the intervention by the superpowers keeps things quiet....otherwise, India would dearly love to knock off Pakistan, once and for all.
[QUOTE]So yeah to answer you question, yeah as per canon the Middle East was largely an afterthought for the US and UK and other allies. Another thing is the allies of Iraq and Syria seem to being a whole lot of nothing. They may have made token attacks towards Turkey, but they did nothing to help the Soviets on their conquest of Iran. Again the Syrian and Iraq had Jordan border and Syrian had the Isreal Border to keep troops at.
What is more interesting there really isn't much reason for the Saudi or the other City-States of the Persian Gulf to play host to the US Central Command and British forces there. As for sending more heavy units, the ones that have been suggested were from the east Coast. Maybe they were going to Korea to help reinforce the 8th US Army and UN commitment there, and got diverted. The 9th Motorized Division, 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions with their bases along the Pacific would be perfect example of unit being diverted to give the US Central Command more punch.
Also diverting the 40th Mechanized wouldn't be too bad, they were from California and probably would of been sent to Korea as reinforcement first off. The 24th Mechanized Division as it stands probably had it two active duty Brigade diverted to Europe at the start of the fighting to bring up III Corps units. The 24th Mechanized that was sent Iraq only when it new troops had been trained and were ready to ship out to Europe, but then sent to Iraq to reinforce Central Command.[\QUOTE]
There was always a lot of doubt as to the 40th MID going to Korea, during the period covered by T2K, it was always Middle East/Korea/NATO...by the end of the '80s, early '90s, the talk was NATO reinforcement with a Middle East deployment possible. One of the reasons that I feel fry to post them into the Gulf.
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With 1st Mechanized, 4th Mechanized, 5th Mechanized, 1st Cavalry, and 2nd Armor Divisions as well as the 3rd ARC, 194th Armor Brigade, and 197th Mechanized Brigade sending their troops that were on active duty still in the States over to take over Preposition equipment. Each of the Division had left their equipment at their state side bases, so 5 Divisional HQ, Support, 2 out three Combat, and Aviation Brigades could be reformed with 1 ACR, and 2 other Brigade to boot. I am sure one could organize an additional Armor and Mechanized Divisions for the Middle East at the cost of reinforcing Europe with fresh troops and slightly used equipment.
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There are two possible ways to reinforce CENTCOM, either slide 1-2 heavy divisions over as reinforcements or deploy 3-4 of the NG armored/mechanized brigades to reinforce...but that kills the idea of the 44th Armored.