Speculations Over Ground Campaign into Iran Again Heat Up as US Moves to "Isolate" Coastal Zone
Trump continues plying his neocon ‘forever war’ against Iran, with no plan or end in sight. Now the latest reports indicate his intention to escalate the strikes onto Iranian civil infrastructure like power plants and beyond in the coming weeks.
The more troubling reports claim that Trump continues to plan for some kind of ground assault. The caveat is that it would likely be for the islands, and not with US troops—or at least, not with US troops leading the charge.
Trump himself intimated this, hinting that other Gulf nations should supply the ground troops. Listen to 0:25 below:
“We have other people that would do a ground campaign for us.”
In fact, in the above interview clip Trump reveals several quite telling things.
First, note what he says about not hitting the oil terminals on Kharg island. He says they represent a major chunk of the world economy, which proves what we’ve been saying for months now—that Trump is in some ways trapped because, despite all his bluster, he would be shooting himself in the foot by destroying Iranian oil infrastructure, as it would tank his own economy, as well as the world’s.
But the more strategically revealing tidbit was his statement that: “If we degrade them far enough and deep enough back, I would [take Kharg island].”
Here he clearly admits two things:
The US currently does not have the capability to take Kharg island because it is too dangerous. Iranian capabilities are still present which would wreak havoc and casualties on US troops.
Trump’s plan appears to be to bombard the coastal region for a long time in order to degrade Iran’s strike capabilities such that they are pushed back “deep enough” so as to allow a safe enough corridor for troops to somehow land on Kharg island.
Trump’s “ideal” holy grail is obviously to seize Iran’s oil facilities on Kharg island and thus steal the oil—which would be a true coup de grace for Trump. But the likelihood of this being successful is very small
WSJ confirms that such plans continue to populate the deluded minds of US leadership:
From the above WSJ piece:
Attempting to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil-export hub, would harm the country’s oil industry but it also would put American forces directly in harm’s way. Troops would be easy targets for Iranian missiles and drones, U.S. officials and analysts say.
Retired Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said the U.S. should still consider a Kharg Island operation. “That’s something we should think about doing because possession of Iranian soil would be a significant factor in future negotiations with Iran,” he said Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
Another WSJ piece posits an even more extreme scenario to capture all Iranian territory proper along the coast itself, rather than just the islands:
Land invasion
At the extreme, Trump has the option of a large and costly ground operation to seize the territory around the waterway, whose rocky shores present unique challenges. That would require thousands of troops in an operation that would likely take months.
Iran has been preparing for a possible invasion since before the war. The paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has 190,000 troops, along with the country’s regular army, and specializes in fights against better-armed foes.
A ground operation on Iran’s coastline would leave U.S. troops extremely vulnerable to attacks from the country’s rear, said David Des Roches, a former Persian Gulf-focused U.S. defense official.
And some believe the US is now setting the stage and ‘shaping the battlefield’ for that very possibility:
As the above states, yesterday the US actually hit several key bridges connecting the coastal Bandar Abbas region to its neighboring western regions of Larestan and Shiraz:
Iranian Fars News confirmed:
Recall that the Israeli plan was to send Kurdish forces across the Iraqi border into Iran, and recently the US instigated a kind of anti-Iranian coup in Iraq, with speculation being that it was in preparation to set the stage for a ground assault into Iran by first weakening Iranian proxies in Iraq.
Trump may be naively hoping that other Gulf countries step up to the plate and offer such ground support, which is unlikely to happen.
Trump is being fed misinformation on Iran from his Mossad-tainted stovepipes. As an example, just take a look at the exchange below, where Trump demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge—or even care, for that matter—as to how much combat power the Iranians have left:
So: “Nobody knows” how many missiles Iran has, not even Trump or the US. But don’t worry, Iran “will be defeated very soon”, the swaggering POTUS nonchalantly remarks:
As for Hormuz, CENTCOM continues pretending it is fully “open” as even neutral maritime carriers laugh in the US’s face:
Read the exchange below as reported by WSJ for a belly laugh:
Trump, on the other hand, seems to think “oil is flowing like never before”, as per another unhinged rant:
Some pundits are now proposing that Iran could be “overplaying” its Hormuz hand because Gulf countries are slowly moving toward redirecting oil via inland pipelines, to the point where Hormuz would theoretically no longer retain leverage for Iran.
The problem with this thesis is that it misunderstands the core dynamic of the entire war. Hormuz has presented a convenient focal point for the US administration, partly because after losing the wider war against Iran, Trump thinks liberating Hormuz can be used as a quick off-ramp and getaway damage control plan to save face.
In reality, Hormuz has nothing to do with US’s inability to defeat Iran, overthrow its leadership, and turn the country into a fractured client state and banana republic in one.
Hormuz had nothing to do with US’s inability to defend its bases from Iranian attacks which damaged or destroyed a large swath of US’s most critical regional assets. If you removed Hormuz from the equation, it would not change the fact that US’s aimless bombing campaign is incapable of crippling the Iranian state to the needed point of no return.
In short: Iran has successfully defended itself from an all-out attack by Israel-US via its own innate military means that have little to do with, nor rely on, Hormuz.
Sure, the strait adds a kind of pressure timer on the US, as economic life lines slowly seep away and oil prices creep up. But even if you took that away, there still remain other important ‘timers’, not least of which are dwindling US’s weapons stocks, waning domestic political capital, etc.
That’s without even getting into the fact that Iran can strike the newly proposed pipelines and infrastructure, which kind of obviates the whole thing to begin with.
Latest satellite images show Iran’s newest strikes have again wiped out major sections of US and allied bases.
Here in Jordan’s King Faisal Air Base:
They continue to claim no casualties while large amounts of medevac-capable C-17s were again spotted departing the region after the Iranian blows.
Iran launches massive strikes against key US and allied facilities
▪️Satellite images show the results of strikes by the IRGC on an American maritime surveillance radar station on the Salam rocks, as well as on an air defense radar in the Ghanam area of Oman.
▪️Iran also announced strikes on three buildings in the Zaid military complex in the capital of the UAE, and on the King Faisal base in Jordan.
The MQ-9 Reaper fleet likewise continued getting massacred as another one was shot down by Iranian forces:
Another American MQ-9A Reaper reconnaissance and strike UAV shot down by Iranian air defenses has been found in the mountains of Dehloran County, in the southern part of Ilam Province bordering Iraq.
The IRGC had previously reported that one of its air defense systems had shot down an MQ-9A somewhere near Andimeshk, in the north of Khuzestan Province. This must be the same drone, since Andimeshk and Dehloran counties directly border each other.
As of this time, the US has again been massively airlifting assets from Europe to the Mideast, including more fighter jets, which can only mean further rounds of strikes:
Based on the recent activity of the U.S. air transport fleet in the region, it appears that the Americans are once again amassing resources for strikes against Iran. The air bridge is operating at nearly the same intensity as it was before the start of Operation "Epic Fury."
Prominent Iranian academic Seyed Marandi claims that Trump is definitely planning for a land invasion of some kind, along with Gulf allies:
It all rests on whether Trump believes Iranian deterrence has been “pushed back far enough” inland, as he hinted at the very opening. Should his advisors inform him the area is safe and secure, he could make an attempt of some sort, but by all appearances it would take a long time of further bombing and degrading of Iranian assets to even approach such a point.
Iran on the other hand continues to threaten the closure of Bab Al-Mandab as a final lever of escalation should the US proceed to bombing Iranian power plants and other key civilian infrastructure assets.
As a parting video demonstrating US’s powerlessness in thwarting Iran in Hormuz, here is Rubio’s voice cracking as he histrionically goes full “Karen” while threatening to call the UN’s “HR” department on Iran:
What is the purpose of the UN? he asks, if the body refuses to act on Iran’s dominion over Hormuz.
Well, let’s see, Marco: Hormuz was fully open before you began an unprovoked war of aggression on Iran. Now your own sitting president is not only both blowing up ships in the strait—just as Iran is doing—but, in mirror fashion, is even planning to begin charging tolls on transiting nations.
Which violator should the UN prosecute?
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Sulfur, aluminum, fertilizer, and helium can't be sent via pipeline. Idiots who suggest a pipeline across the region as a solution to bypass the closure of the Strait of Hormuz need to lay off the crackpipe.
Sorry, Trump is not going to become the Master of Asia. He's not Alexander of Macedon. If he actually tries to invade then the Western economy will be devastated. The Western debt & credit system is already on the ropes, an invasion would cause it to all come crashing down.