Aniss Rais
Four weeks of US-Israeli war on Iran – and the stakes have climbed far higher than Washington anticipated. US President Donald Trump threatened on Truth Social to “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened within 48 hours.
The deadline passed. He blinked and, for the second time, postponed his own ultimatum, recasting it as ‘productive conversations.’ Tehran denied any talks and insisted the reversal was driven by “fear of Iran’s response.”
The US-Israeli air campaign was supposed to break Iran. It didn’t. Now the hawks are pushing for boots on the ground. But the ground war being floated does not simply risk American lives on an island 15 miles (around 24 kilometers) off Iran’s coast. It threatens the entire US military architecture in the Persian Gulf – the bases, the alliances, and the energy infrastructure that has underwritten American dominance in West Asia for decades.
In an interview with NBC News, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in response to a question about a possible ground invasion by the US, delivered four words the Pentagon had no answer for: “We are waiting for them,” which became a meme in the process. The bluff has been called. The question now is whether showing Washington’s hand collapses the entire table.
Raising the stakes with an empty hand
The ground invasion discourse is no longer hypothetical. Pentagon officials have submitted detailed preparation requests for deploying ground forces. Three Marine amphibious assault groups are converging on the Persian Gulf: the USS Tripoli carrying the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit from Japan, the USS Boxer with the 11th MEU from California, and roughly 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg.
By the time all units arrive, between 6,000 and 8,000 US ground troops will be within striking distance of Iran. But the composition of these forces exposes the gap between rhetoric and reality. Military analyst Ruben Stewart noted that what is being deployed is “consistent with discrete, time-limited operations, not a sustained ground campaign.”
At the same time, Israel’s own military is showing signs of strain. Chief of staff Eyal Zamir warned on 25 March that the army is “going to collapse in on itself,” citing an eroding reserve force and a deepening manpower crisis as wars stretch from Gaza to Lebanon and now Iran.
Washington is pushing more chips to the center of the table – but the hand behind them remains weak. The scenarios now circulating form an escalation ladder where each rung risks pulling the US deeper into a fight it is structurally unprepared to sustain.
Pickaxe Mountain and the raid that takes too long
The most politically attractive option is a covert raid on Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile – believed to be around 400 kilograms enriched to roughly 60 percent, possibly stored near Isfahan or deep inside Pickaxe Mountain.
But the problem is one Sun Tzu identified centuries ago: speed is the essence of war – yet this mission demands the opposite. Extracting nuclear material requires troops to remain on-site long enough for Iranian forces to respond.
Former CENTCOM commander General Joseph Votel described such operations as “feasible,” but issued a clear warning: “You’re going to have to take care of them, resupply them, medevac them. And that requires a logistical tail, and at some point that tail has to be protected as well.”
Washington still carries the scar of Operation Eagle Claw – the failed 1980 hostage rescue that collapsed in the Iranian desert and helped end Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
Kharg Island: The trap disguised as a shortcut
If covert raids carry too much risk for too little certainty, the next option on the table is a limited territorial seizure – and Washington’s hawks have converged on a single target: Kharg Island.
An eight-square-mile (around 20.7 square kilometers) coral outcrop in the northern Persian Gulf, Kharg processes roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports. US Senator Lindsey Graham urged Trump to “take Kharg Island,” while retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg described himself as a “big believer in boots on the ground” there.
The logic sounds surgical: seize Iran’s economic lifeline and force Tehran to the table. But it collapses under even basic scrutiny. Kharg sits just 15 miles (around 24 kilometers) off the Iranian mainland – well within range of coastal missile batteries, drones, rockets, and artillery. Any US force stationed there would face “near-constant bombardment.”
Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery put it bluntly: “If we seize Kharg Island, they’re going to turn off the spigot on the other end. It’s not like we control their oil production.”
Sun Tzu warned that there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare. Modern analyses reach the same conclusion. Think tank assessments warn that Kharg is a textbook case of mission creep, pulling US forces step by step toward a wider ground war.
The war Iran has prepared for
What Washington’s hawks consistently overlook is that Iran has spent decades preparing for precisely this scenario – not to match US firepower, but to make any ground war prohibitively costly.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is divided into 31 autonomous ground divisions, each capable of operating independently if central command is disrupted.
When strikes killed the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, and Basij chief Gholamreza Soleimani, the military apparatus continued launching missiles, closing the Strait of Hormuz, and fighting. A command structure designed to survive decapitation appears to be doing exactly that.
At sea, Iran’s naval doctrine relies on asymmetric warfare. Its reported arsenal: hundreds of fast attack craft, coastal missile batteries, an estimated 5,000 naval mines, over 1,000 unmanned suicide vessels, and Ghadir-class midget submarines built for the Gulf’s shallow waters. The Persian Gulf is not an open ocean. It is a corridor shaped by geography and fortified by doctrine – designed to swallow conventional naval power.
On land, the scale alone is decisive. Iran is four times the size of Iraq, with a population exceeding 90 million. Estimates suggest that any conventional invasion would require “hundreds of thousands of troops.”
Then there is the Basij paramilitary network, reportedly capable of mobilizing up to a million reservists – and the IRGC’s decades of experience coordinating asymmetric resistance across the region.
The US currently has fewer than 8,000 moving into position. This is not a war Iran needs to win – but one it is designed to make Washington unable to sustain.
Winning Kharg, losing the Gulf
Even if Washington succeeds tactically – seizing Kharg and declaring victory – the strategic consequences are immediate.
Since the war began, Iran has already demonstrated its escalation capacity. Missiles and drones have targeted US-linked infrastructure across Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Energy facilities, airports, and desalination plants have all come under fire.
A seizure of Kharg would likely trigger a far broader response. Iranian officials have explicitly warned of “continuous and relentless attacks” on regional infrastructure if Iranian territory is occupied.
Tehran has also signaled it could expand the conflict to the Bab al-Mandab Strait through allied Ansarallah-aligned forces in Yemen, threatening a second global chokepoint.
Every US position in the Gulf depends on supply lines that run through the very states already under threat. Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet. The UAE hosts Al-Dhafra. Kuwait functions as a logistical hub.
As the Stimson Center noted, Gulf states already fear Trump could declare victory and leave them fighting Iran alone.
The political ceiling in Washington
If Iran’s strategy forms the military trap, US public opinion may be the political one.
Polling shows overwhelming opposition to a ground war. A Quinnipiac survey found 74 percent of voters oppose deploying troops, while CNN recorded minimal support for escalation.
More significantly, dissent is emerging within Washington itself. Republican lawmakers have openly questioned the gap between public messaging and classified briefings. Representative Nancy Mace warned that the justifications presented to the public differ from those given behind closed doors.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is seeking $200 billion in supplemental funding at $1 billion per day. When the lawmakers holding the purse strings call the war’s justifications “deeply troubling,” the political chips are running out – before a single body bag has arrived from Iranian soil.
Funding is already becoming a fault line, with projected costs running at extraordinary levels.
The last card
The escalation ladder has its own momentum. Every failed pressure tactic – every ineffective strike, every walked-back ultimatum – increases the pressure to climb higher.
Kharg Island is no longer theoretical. The Marines are already at sea. The 82nd Airborne is mobilizing.
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and issued its challenge.
The question is no longer whether the US can seize Kharg, but whether it can afford to – in blood, in treasure, in the stability of its Gulf allies, and in the political credibility that evaporates the moment the first bodybag arrives home.
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Via https://thecradle.co/articles/seizing-the-kharg-washingtons-path-to-defeat-in-the-persian-gulf
Photo Credit: The Cradle
The Most Revolutionary Act 