The president is “leaving all options on the table,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “What could happen with Kharg Island? We’ll see.”
The U.S. has already bombed more than 90 targets on Kharg, together with air defenses, a naval base and mine storage services, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, mentioned at a information convention.
It has not been specified why precisely the U.S. forces are headed to the area. They might be used to safe the Strait of Hormuz or blockade — moderately than invade — Kharg Island, or merely to proceed and help the operations being carried out by the personnel and property already there.
But a floor invasion would be far riskier, in accordance to some professional observers.
“Trump would be gambling that the remaining Iranian leadership, faced with the loss of tens of billions in annual revenue, would capitulate,” in accordance to Christian Emery, an affiliate professor specializing in U.S.-Iran relations at University College London.
But “military success is by no means guaranteed,” he added, with the “real risk of it spiraling into a far more dangerous” scenario.
Asked for remark, the White House referred to remarks by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in a briefing Wednesday declined to converse in regards to the “hypothetical question” of whether or not the U.S. might put boots on the bottom in Iran.
What is Kharg Island?
Because most of Iran’s shoreline is too shallow for supertankers, the nation pumps virtually all of its crude manufacturing via underwater pipelines to Kharg.
Once utilized by Iran’s monarchy to exile political prisoners, this rock is deceptively fertile on the bottom.
A brief movie by regime-controlled broadcaster Press TV final 12 months confirmed groves of palm bushes rising amongst freshwater springs, a rarity for Gulf islands.
Archeological websites embrace 2,400-year-old wall carvings and rock-cut tombs, and there is an 18th-century fort constructed by the Dutch East India Company.
In the Fifties, the island was developed into the sprawling oil facility that exists in the present day. It’s dwelling to at the very least 8,000 residents, lots of them oil staff.
Access is restricted, incomes it the nickname “Forbidden Island,” however satellite tv for pc and aerial pictures present rows of oil storage tanks, flames gushing from flare stacks, an internet of pipelines and huge piers that permit supertankers to transport oil around the globe — principally to China.
“Kharg Island is a lifeline for Iran’s economy,” mentioned Dania Thafer, govt director of the Gulf International Forum, a assume tank primarily based in Washington, D.C. Tehran would “likely escalate sharply” if the island is attacked, she mentioned, intensifying strikes on U.S. forces and Gulf power infrastructure.
Trump himself has downplayed Iran’s potential defenses. “I call it ‘the little oil island’ that sits there, so totally unprotected,” he mentioned final week.
He has had designs on it since at the very least 1988, when he advised The Guardian newspaper that “I’d do a number on Kharg Island; I’d go in and take it” if Iran fired at American troops or ships. Trump mentioned within the interview that taking the island would be a approach to strain Iran.
At the time Trump made the feedback, marine visitors was being disrupted within the Persian Gulf. During the Iran-Iraq struggle within the Nineteen Eighties, dozens of service provider vessels had been attacked by each events in what broadly turned often called the “tanker war.”
Regardless of Trump’s intent, what’s clear is that further U.S. personnel are headed to the area. This contains 1,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division and 5,000 Marines.
Steaming the Marines towards the Gulf from the Philippine Sea is the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship that might show helpful in any assault on Kharg.
That has not gone unnoticed.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, mentioned Wednesday that his nation was “closely monitoring all US movements in the region, especially troop deployments.”
He warned on X, “Do not test our resolve to defend our land.”
Russia, Iran’s ally that has been offering it with intelligence in the course of the struggle, hopes the concept of a floor invasion “will not go beyond talk and threats,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mentioned at a briefing Wednesday.
Some analysts are bullish.
“It is my opinion that this force is capable of taking the island considering the substantial air and naval power we already have deployed in the region,” mentioned Francis A. Galgano, a former Army lieutenant colonel who is now a professor of navy geography at Villanova University.
“If the plan is to win a war against Iran, then taking Kharg Island should be one of the central missions of the conflict,” he added. “It provides the U.S. with enormous leverage in any negotiations and it’s a ‘stick’ to force the Iranians to stop attacking shipping.”
Others will not be so positive.
One senior official from a Persian Gulf nation, talking on situation of anonymity to focus on these delicate points, mentioned Iran was “not weak enough yet” for the U.S. to take Kharg.
“I believe the president’s thinking about it” however “I personally, myself, don’t think the timing is right yet,” the official mentioned. “Iran still has tools that it can make an occupation force by the U.S. still very risky.”
Right now, “the regime is definitely not cracking,” the official added. “It’s weaker, but it’s not cracking.”
Others are much less optimistic nonetheless.
Kharg Island is lower than 20 miles from the mainland, effectively inside rocket, artillery and drone vary, in accordance to Emery at University College London. It is additionally tons of of miles contained in the Persian Gulf, which means any U.S. power would take at the very least a day to attain it and “providing time for Iran to mine surrounding waters and prepare defenses,” he mentioned.
Even if the U.S. did seize the island, “holding the position would be extremely challenging, with resupply operations exposed to persistent drone, missile and artillery fire,” he mentioned. Ultimately, he believes, it “would be an absolutely disastrous decision that would ensure the conflict lasted many months.”
