The Marines Could Take Kharg. Then the Real Disaster Starts
Trump needs US Marines on Kharg Island to get out of the Iran War
Quagmire: (noun) - a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position
Right about now, President Donald J. Trump is feeling an emotion that rarely surfaces in a man who’s deeply self-absorbed and pathologically incapable of admitting error.
That emotion is regret.
A little more than a month ago, still high on the euphoria of a bloodless regime change in Venezuela, Trump stumbled into the Iran War like a drunk college kid stumbling into the wrong house… and getting shot.
He made no effort whatsoever to explain to the American people why this massive expenditure of blood and treasure was worth it. So, MAGA turned on him. Even Trump’s Truth e-commerce store had to shut down its website yesterday due to record low orders.
In this sense, Trump’s adventure in “Iraq 2.5: Oops, Different Country” may have just guaranteed a so-called blue wave in November. After all, there’s no way to point at record high gas prices and blame those “radical left libtards with TDS” now.
He also made no effort whatsoever to explain to long-time strategic allies why this operation was in the world’s interests.
Then he demanded said allies join a war they had no role in designing. He berated the ones who hesitated. And just for funsies, he made a Pearl Harbor joke to the Japanese prime minister in the Oval Office.
He has repeatedly framed NATO partners as deadbeats rather than combat enhancers. And now, when he needs someone to ride shotgun on a Strait of Hormuz escort mission, he’s finding that the people he’s spent months insulting aren’t exactly volunteering.
And here’s a dirty secret about the US military: As powerful as it appears, the US military has never been designed to fight major wars alone. The whole post-World War II architecture like NATO, the Pacific alliance system, basing agreements, intelligence sharing… all exist precisely because fighting alongside capable allies activates and multiplies American power exponentially.
The US way of making war is “alliance warfare.”
Yet, Trump has been systematically torching that architecture for reasons that remain genuinely unclear.
Now he’s alone… And lashing out on Truth social with claims of destroying the entire Persian civilization. Okay, fuck it, I guess we’re no longer differentiating between the regime and the Iranian people. Back in my day (I’m only 40-something) we used to attempt to minimize civilian casualties, but I guess we’re the baddies now.
When a “short, sharp” air campaign starts drifting toward economic warfare and civilian infrastructure punishment, it means the original theory of victory didn’t quite stick.
Trump just walked blindfolded into the same trap that caught more than one of his predecessors: believing airpower alone could produce a quick political collapse. Take it from me, airpower can break things. It can terrorize, isolate, and disrupt. But it usually can’t manufacture a stable political outcome on command.
I know, Donald, those Air Force generals can be quite convincing. President Johnson fell for it too.
If Trump walks away now, the Strait stays closed and oil prices stay high. Tehran wants reimbursement for war damage before the strait reopens. That’s not an unreasonable negotiating position from their perspective; it’s a straightforward application of “you broke it, you bought it.”
But it’s an extraordinarily difficult thing for Trump to sell domestically. Paying Iran to stop a war the US started, against a country Trump spent his first term sanctioning into the floor, smells like defeat.
So not only is Trump alone, but he’s stuck.
Hence the regret.
Which brings us to the news that broke overnight: an intense wave of strikes was reported on bridges across Iran and on Kharg Island, the country’s key oil export hub. The US military struck dozens of military targets on the island overnight, (not oil infrastructure mind you).
I believe that Trump wants to put US Marines on Kharg Island as a negotiating tactic to create an off ramp for himself. You see, right now, he has no leverage except vague, maximalist threats on Truth social. Kharg handles roughly 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. It is, without hyperbole, one of the regime’s economic lungs.
In theory, if the US military holds Kharg for an undetermined length of time, it could be used as a bargaining chip to reopen the Strait.
But taking the island and holding it are two very different things.
War planners love islands because islands look neat on a map. They sit there in the Persian Gulf like a circled answer on a test, waiting for some colonel to say, “we take that, and the whole campaign changes.”
Kharg Island has been tempting that kind of thinking for weeks.
The regret of the morning after
I think a seizure could be accomplished with somewhere in the range of 800 to 1,000 Marines… the “taking it” part is well within reach for a military that remains very good at the pointy end of the spear.
The problem begins immediately after waking up in an unfamiliar bed after a night of dropping speedballs at the club.
Dear God, what have I done?
Kharg sits about 26 kilometers off the Iranian coast. In military terms, that’s a dartboard with Americans on it, and Iran has a lot of darts.
Start with the rockets and missiles, because they’re the most immediate problem. Iran fields the Fajr-5, a 333mm unguided rocket with a range of about 75 kilometers. Kharg is well inside that envelope from multiple mainland launch points.
The Zelzal-2 ballistic rocket pushes that range out to 200 kilometers and carries a warhead heavy enough to ruin anyone’s morning.
Neither system is precision guided, but they don’t need to be. On a small island where everything is close together, accuracy is less important than volume.
You saturate, you destroy, you repeat.
Iran also has the Fateh-110, a short-range ballistic missile with genuine precision capability and a range of about 300 kilometers, which means launch vehicles can fire from well inland, safely outside US strike reach (unless we’re going to risk more downed airmen), and still put warheads on Kharg with meaningful accuracy.
Then come the anti-ship missiles, which matter enormously for resupply convoys. Iran’s Noor missile, essentially a locally produced variant of the Chinese C-802, is a sea-skimming anti-ship weapon with a range of around 170 kilometers.
The Qader extends that to 300 kilometers. These fly low, they’re difficult to intercept without a robust layered defense, and Iran has been manufacturing and stockpiling them for years.
Any ship running a resupply run to Kharg is doing so inside the Noor’s engagement envelope for the entire approach.
The Khalij Fars goes a step further: it’s an anti-ship ballistic missile, meaning it comes in from above at high velocity, which defeats the engagement geometry of most naval close-in weapon systems designed to handle sea-skimming threats.
Iran demonstrated it against moving targets in exercises years ago. The Navy has been concerned about it ever since.
The mine threat is arguably worse because it’s invisible and persistent. Iran has one of the largest and most diverse mine inventories in the region: bottom mines, moored contact mines, influence mines triggered by magnetic or acoustic signatures.
The approaches to Kharg through the northern Gulf are relatively shallow, which is ideal mine terrain. US strikes early in the campaign specifically targeted Iranian naval mine storage facilities, which tells you exactly how seriously Washington takes this.
But “targeted storage facilities” doesn’t mean “eliminated the threat.” Mines already deployed, mines moved before the strikes, mines cached at secondary locations… they don’t announce themselves.
Every resupply vessel runs a minesweeping problem that slows everything down and keeps crews on a specific kind of anxious that erodes readiness fast.
How many billion-dollar US Navy warships is Trump willing to sacrifice to achieve his negotiating position?
Let me phrase that differently: How many US Marines is Trump willing to sacrifice to achieve his negotiating position?
Now add the drones in layers.
Iran’s Shahed-136 needs no introduction. Iran has them in obscene quantities.
Below that, the Mohajer-6 is an armed ISR platform that can conduct reconnaissance and drop munitions, giving Iran persistent eyes over the island and the ability to cue the precision fires above.
At the bottom of the stack, and potentially the most maddening problem for a garrison, are FPV quadcopters; exactly the weapons turning Russian positions into daily attrition nightmares.
These cost a few hundred dollars. The interceptors designed to shoot them down cost tens of thousands. Iran need only make the garrison flinch constantly, disrupt sleep cycles, damage light equipment, and kill people in ones and twos until the political cost becomes unsustainable.
Iran’s crippled (but not destroyed) navy adds the final layer. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy specializes in swarm tactics like fast attack craft in coordinated groups, designed to overwhelm a surface vessel’s close-in defenses through sheer simultaneity.
Every ammo dump, every radar, every fuel bladder, every temporary barracks, every air defense battery you set up to protect the force becomes a target that doesn’t move, and Iran’s kill chain gets cleaner every day you stay.
The Patriot system can handle ballistic missiles; that’s what it’s built for. It cannot simultaneously handle ballistic missiles, sea-skimming anti-ship missiles, loitering munitions, and FPV swarms unless you plan to empty the magazine overnight.
Once Americans are sitting on Kharg, every Iranian strike creates pressure to respond. More air defense. More naval cover. More mainland suppression. More EVERYTHING.
A raid-sized idea quietly metastasizes into a regional force-protection campaign. The operation that was supposed to create an exit starts generating its own reasons to stay.
We’ve already got a preview of this logic. Iran struck US forces repositioned to Kuwait’s Bubiyan Island after repeated attacks on Camp Arifjan forced a relocation. Different island, same lesson: water doesn’t automatically equal safety. Sometimes it just means the only way out is through the water you’re surrounded by.
So, here’s the strategic picture as it actually sits right now.
Trump needs to end this war.
He can’t leave without something to show for it, and Iran won’t open the strait without compensation that Trump can’t publicly pay.
So, he’s manufacturing leverage at Kharg: bombing the military infrastructure, leaving the oil terminals intact, signaling that the next step could be occupation, hoping Tehran blinks first, which doesn’t seem likely: Tehran just cut off all communications with Washington after Trump’s bombastic threats last night.
Iran’s counter-strategy is simple: don’t blink. Make the occupation threat too costly to execute and the exit too embarrassing to take.
They’ve been waiting out American pressure for 45 years. They’re reasonably good at it.
The strikes on Kharg may well produce negotiations. There’s a version of this where both sides find a quiet off-ramp, save face through intermediaries, and the strait reopens before anyone has to admit what it cost. Oil goes back down, stocks go back up, Trump still loses a huge chunk of Congress in November.
That outcome is remotely plausible.
But if it doesn’t work… if Iran holds, the strait stays closed, and Trump feels pressure to actually land troops on the island, the situation stops being a coercive negotiation and becomes something considerably more dangerous.
An occupied Kharg under constant drone and missile attack, with resupply convoys running through mined waters, is a commitment that generates its own momentum, its own casualties, and its own political impossibility of withdrawal.
I always thought the metaphor of “off-ramp” was an odd phrase for deconfliction; as if war were a highway.
Well, if war is a highway, Kharg is not an off-ramp. It’s a dead-end… filled with regret.
I assume you first need to get the MEUs through the Straits don't you? Particularly if they want their toys there to play with.
Now Trump has a war just like Putin's! Neither can get out of their respective wars without having something to show for it.