CENTCOM Priorities

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Deter Iran

• Iran’s malign activities is one of the main challenges we face in the central region; for more than 40 years, the Iranian regime has funded and aggressively supported terrorism and terrorist organizations
• Our mission is to deter Iran and its proxies from continuing malign activities that destabilize not only the region, but global security and commerce as well
• Iran continues to conduct state-on-state ballistic missile, cruise missile, and UAS attacks...as well as attacks through proxies and aligned groups that kill and injure innocent civilians and Coalition forces
• Iran continues to introduce cutting-edge technology like ballistic missiles, land attack cruise missiles, and UAVs to the battlespace

C-VEOs

• Request host nations repatriate citizens (women, children, combatants) from IDP camps; request they provide/continue providing humanitarian assistance
• Request assistance to improve security conditions in IDP camps to counter ISIS’ influence among inhabitants
• There is no military solution to the IDP camp problem; addressing the issue requires cooperation among diplomatic, security, and humanitarian organizations, as well as a local solution supported by local governments
• Unless the international community finds a way to repatriate, reintegrate, and support locally grown reconciliation programs for IDP camp populations, we will bear witness to the indoctrination and radicalization of the next generation of ISIS
• While ISIS’ territorial caliphate is defeated, they remain a transnational threat; their desire to regenerate and conduct external ops threatens the U.S. homeland, and those of our partners and allies
• Our goal is to continue developing and enabling Iraqi Security Forces and our partnered Syrian Democratic Forces so they can contain and defeat ISIS without external assistance

Strategic Competition/Partnerships

• Counter abandonment narrative with “non-traditional” cooperation: intel sharing, cyber exchanges, exercises and training
• Maintain current agreements, seek additional ALOCs and GLOCs
• FMS/FMF processes are lengthy and bureaucratic; if we do not prioritize FMS/FMF, we will not only lose interoperability with our partners, but partners may limit access, basing, overflight
• Prioritize our security assistance enterprise and defense industry’s ability to support our partners’ defensive needs in timely manner
• The central region provides key terrain and a dominant position for the U.S. to strategically compete with China and Russia through a range of security cooperation ventures including border security, counter narcotics, counter terrorism, and defense institution building--activities that allow us to maintain status as partner of choice in the region
• Regional partners, allies are foundational to our collective ability to address challenges presented by strategic competitors in the region
li>Maintaining a sufficient and sustainable presence in the central region is critical to preserving security relationships that will further our national interests

IAMD

• We cannot contend with complex and interconnected challenges alone. Mutually beneficial partnerships and alliance architectures are our greatest strategic advantage; they are the center of gravity in our national strategies
• We must place increased emphasis on improving partners’ collective defensive capabilities by building and maintaining multilateral constructs that they can sustain
• Controlling the air domain is essential to our collective success in future operations; lack of coordination presents seams along out borders, airspace, and in international waterways that can be exploited

C-UAS

• State and non-state actors are rapidly growing their UAS capabilities, which presents a direct threat to the U.S. and our regional partners and allies
• The growing threat posed by UAS, coupled with our lack of dependable, networked capability to counter them is the most concerning tactical development since the rise of the IED in Iraq
• The strategic answer to effectively counter UAS threats is to combine our efforts, with regional partners and allies, through the Regional Security Construct
• Our adversaries seize the opportunity to acquire relatively cheap commercial and military-grade UAVs and weaponize them to great effect; these systems are inexpensive, easy to modify, and easy to proliferate