President Donald Trump threatened to invade Iran’s Kharg Island in order to seize Iranian oil infrastructure there. “At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets,” Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday morning.
The threat suggests that the president is seeking to rapidly escalate hostilities with Iran even as diplomatic talks continue. It remains unclear whether Trump is serious about the invasion or simply using bluster to increase his leverage at the negotiating table. The president repeatedly threatened to seize Kharg Island in the early phases of the war but backed off after reaching a ceasefire with Iran in early April.
If the threat is serious, then U.S. forces will soon face a daunting mission. As retired Army Major Harrison Mann wrote in RS earlier this year, an operation to seize Kharg Island would amount to a “suicide mission” and a “self-imposed hostage crisis.”
Trump’s first problem would be ensuring that he has enough rapid deployment troops in the region to carry out the mission and beat back Iranian military installments on the island. The best option for an invasion, according to Mann, would be an airborne jump, but that would carry significant risks for soldiers, who could be blown off course and land in the Persian Gulf or in the middle of the island’s civilian population centers.
Even if U.S. forces managed to seize the island, they would quickly come under fire from Iranian troops on the mainland, which lies only 15 miles away from Kharg. And they would have limited support from U.S. troops in Arab Gulf states and on naval vessels stationed outside of the Persian Gulf.
Trump’s bet appears to be that Iran would capitulate if the U.S. took Kharg and dramatically reduced Iran’s ability to export oil. But this could be a costly miscalculation, according to Mann. “Iran’s leaders are fighting for the survival of the Islamic Republic, not to protect oil infrastructure,” he wrote. “The opportunity to inflict a mass casualty event that could sap limited U.S. public support for the war, or to hold entire battalions as de facto hostages, may well appear more valuable to Tehran than oil revenue.”
Trump himself acknowledged these risks in a Fox News interview shortly after he threatened to take Kharg. “I don’t know that America has the stomach for it,” he said, adding that the American public would “like to see us come home.”
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