Thousands of American troops are believed to be preparing a deadly, high-risk mission to seize key islands off the coast of Iran, as Donald Trump prepares to embark on the next phase of his war.
The US President appears to have decided that the small, rocky island of Kharg, Iran’s oil export hub, is key to winning the war he started alongside Israel a month ago.
Trump is reportedly considering sending 10,000 more ground troops to the Middle East to give him “more military options” even as he pushes for peace talks with Tehran, US media reports. An estimated 7,000 Marines and paratroopers, as well as amphibious warships and landing craft, are already being sent to the region.
Seizing or blockading Kharg and other strategic islands in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has been attacking shipping, would hand Washington an important bargaining chip in any talks to end the war. However, the move would also be hugely risky, putting US troops in the direct line of fire from Iranian missiles, drones and other weaponry, and potentially dragging America into a bloody war of attrition.
Trump blasted Iran as a “lunatic nation” on Thursday and warned that if the regime did not agree to a ceasefire, the US would become Iran’s “worst nightmare”.
He added: “They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!” He also joked about launching a ground invasion at 3pm on Friday.
Kharg Island, in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran (Photo: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2024)Why Trump thinks Kharg is the key
At just eight square miles, Kharg, which sits about 15 miles off the Iranian coast, plays an outsize role in Iran’s economy. Before the war, more than 90 per cent of Iran’s 1.7 million barrels of crude exports went via Kharg every day. Some White House officials believe taking it would “totally bankrupt” Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, cripple Iran’s economy and lead to a swift end of the war.
In their thinking, controlling Kharg gives Washington leverage over the Iranian regime to force it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and halt attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure, which have panicked global oil and gas markets.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Trump ally, has claimed that “he who controls Kharg Island controls the destiny of this war” and called for the US to seize it.
“We did Iwo Jima, we can do this. The Marines, my money’s always on the Marines,” he said this week, in reference to the bloody five-week battle of the Second World War when nearly 7,000 US troops died on the Japanese island.
Trump has discussed invading Kharg as far back as the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, when he said: “One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.”
What seizing the islands would look like
On Tuesday, the Pentagon ordered elements of the 82nd Airborne Division of elite paratroopers, who are ready to deploy within 18 hours, to the Middle East. That came after the US sent two Marine Expeditionary Units, specialising in rapid-response amphibious landings, raids and assault missions, to the region, each with about 2,300 US marines.
The 31st MEU is expected to arrive from Japan later today on board USS Tripoli, an amphibious-assault vessel. Meanwhile the 11th MEU and the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group — three ships led by USS Boxer – is expected to arrive in the region from California in three to four weeks.
However, such a mission would be hugely risky and likely to result in a large number of US casualties.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned this week that “Iran’s enemies, with the support of one of the regional countries are preparing to occupy one of the Iranian islands”.
He added: “Our forces are monitoring all enemy movements, and if they take any action, all of that regional state’s vital infrastructure will be targeted with continuous and relentless attacks.”
The Persian Gulf is still too dangerous for US warships to enter. While Marines could go ashore on MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, for ships to even get to Kharg, which lies at the north-west of the Gulf, they would need to travel more than 350 miles past the Strait of Hormuz.
That would make them targets for Iranian ground-based, short-range ballistic missiles fired from mobile launchers, drones, mines and fast boats laden with explosives.
The Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer. The US is deploying additional Marines to the Middle East, possibly signalling a coming ground operation (Photo: Seaman Apprentice Trace Gorsuch/Navy Office/ AFP via Getty Images)Retired Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian said if the US wanted to take Kharg, seizing other strategic Gulf islands to exert control over the waterway would be a likely first step.
“If I had to make a guess, it would [be seizing] something in the Strait to open it up, and then maybe moving onto Kharg Island,” Cancian told The i Paper. “Because Kharg, all the way up in the Gulf, is much harder to get at, the Marines would be under fire so the first step would be to open the straits.”
That alone might be enough to gain leverage over Iran, he added.
These islands might include Qeshm and Larak, on the horseshoe bend of the Strait, the Greater and Lesser Tunbs – claimed by both the UAE and Iran – or Abu Musa farther west.
Qeshm, at 558 square miles, is the strait’s largest island and dominates the narrowest point. In the tunnels and caves beneath it, a “missile city” is believed to hide Iranian weapons including anti-ship missiles, attack boats, mines and drones.
“There are some islands like Qeshm and Abu Musa that you’d ideally want to be able to control, or essentially get rid of everything on there, out of concern that standoff weapons or small boats could be used to strike,” said Seth G Jones, president of the Defence and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.
However, more preparatory time was needed for such an operation to reduce risks to naval vessels or commercial ships, he added.
Qeshm island in the Gulf off Iran’s southern coast is another island the US could seize (Photo by Atta Kenare/ AFP)Cancian emphasised that reopening the Strait would be a major operation. “It would involve convoys, navy escorts, minesweepers, possibly the Marines and paratroopers. It would likely have army helicopters in the theatre sweeping for the fast boats, aircraft overhead and maybe air defence on the ground,” he said.
“There would certainly be casualties,” Cancian added. “We don’t really know how strong the Iranians are in the Strait. We know that they have drones, ballistic missiles, mines, but what they can actually deliver is unclear and we really won’t know until that first convoy goes through.”
The US has already hit 90 military targets on Kharg. However, the island has layered defences and Iran has moved shoulder-fired, surface-to-air guided missile systems (Manpads) there in recent weeks.
Any invasion of Kharg would be preceded by air strikes against remaining military assets on the island. With air and sea superiority established, Marines and paratroopers would likely then land and try to seize essential infrastructure including the runway.
Iran is thought to have laid traps including anti-personnel and anti-armour mines, including on the shores where the US could stage an amphibious landing. Additional military personnel and air defences have also been brought in preparation for a US operation, CNN reported, citing people familiar with US intelligence.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if paratroopers landed on the airport and Marines landed on the beach and together they swept across the island,” said Cancian. “The island is not very large, it’s the size that could be secured by a force like that. A combination of paratroopers and Marines would be very effective against an isolated island. Keep in mind that this is what the Marines are designed for.”
The 82nd Airborne Division regularly conducts airborne operations as part of their Immediate Response Force training (Photo: Nicole Miller/ US Army)Why Kharg could become a war of attrition
However, Cancian cautioned that getting onto the island was always risky, especially while paratroopers were in the air. “Then they’re going to have to root out the Iranians without badly damaging the oil facilities, and then finally the question of what the Iranians can do from the shore.”
Air Marshal Martin Sampson of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said US forces could end up in a contact battle with Iranian forces on the island and the area could become a “killing zone”.
“There are significant risks and potential pitfalls,” James Stavridis, Nato’s former supreme allied commander, wrote this week. “There are roughly 20,000 Iranians on the island, almost all civilian oil workers, who would need to be contained in their homes or evacuated; the Iranians may have planted sophisticated booby traps; Iran could successfully strike one of the big amphibious ships (as the Argentines did to the British in the Falklands War in 1982). US casualties would almost certainly rise quickly from the 13 who have so far been killed during Operation Epic Fury.”
While taking Kharg might prove to be relatively straightforward, if bloody, holding it could prove more difficult, with troops facing serious force protection and sustainment challenges.
Brynn Tannehill, a former aviator in the US Navy and the Army National Guard US, said troops could “endure ballistic-missile strikes, drone attacks, and petrochemical smoke, all without a reliable means of obtaining logistical support”.
An Iranian military helicopter flies over Revolutionary Guards’ fast boats during naval exercises in the Gulf in 2010 (Photo: Fars / Mehdi Marizad/AFP via Getty Images)Tannehill wrote in The Atlantic that: “The result could be a grinding war of attrition that more closely resembles the battle space in Ukraine than it does the “shock and awe”–style campaigns that Americans are used to.”
“Substantial casualties would be inevitable, and the mission would further erode US missile stockpiles,” said Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “The operation could well stimulate a pro-government response in Iran and would likely be seen by many there and around the world as a US attempt to seize Iranian oil.”
Meanwhile, drones with sufficient range could help Iran “identify and target individual systems and US service members in real time”, according to Ryan Brobst and Cameron McMillan of the Washington think-tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Upon any successful strikes, the Iranian regime would be expected to release videos of those attacks online, using the graphic deaths of American service members as propaganda.”
Some experts have also questioned the central premise that taking Kharg would hand the White House the strategic leverage it desires.
“If the idea is to then bargain with Tehran for an opening of the Strait of Hormuz, it is unclear that the remaining leaders of the regime would be cowed by the threat of losing Kharg,” Stavridis wrote. “They might baulk at agreeing to give up anything for Kharg,” he added.
Hence then, the article about trump faces a bloodbath as he prepares 10 000 more troops to confront iran was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Trump faces a bloodbath as he prepares 10,000 more troops to confront Iran )
Also on site :
- Exclusive: Anthropic acknowledges testing new AI model representing ‘step change’ in capabilities, after accidental data leak reveals its existence
- Retired Gen. Wesley Clark tangled up in a crypto fraud suit with Burning Man buddies
- 1965 Timeless Classic Ranked Among ‘Greatest Country Songs of All Time’ Became a Long-Running No. 1 Hit