How Trump Occupied Kharg Island Without Ground Troops… and Embarrassed His Critics
An opinion piece by Mark Thiessen in The Washington Post+++++What a difference one week makes.Last Tuesday, Donald Trump’s critics were boasting that Iran had achieved a strategic victory in its war with the United States, using its control of the Strait of Hormuz to force the president to accept a ceasefire and return to the negotiating table. Now, Trump has turned the tables, using the ceasefire to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz.While the United States was meeting with Iranian officials in Islamabad, Trump ordered American destroyers to transit the strait into the Persian Gulf to help enforce a military blockade on all traffic entering and leaving Iranian ports.Previously, Iran allowed its own ships to pass through the narrow waterway while barring American and allied vessels.It is difficult to overstate the brilliance of this plan: the blockade achieves almost the same result as a military operation to seize Kharg Island (through which virtually all of Iran’s oil passes) without the risks of deploying U.S. ground troops. It effectively halts Iran’s oil exports and cuts off its energy revenues, placing Iran under economic siege.According to an analysis by Meysam Maleki, a former official at the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. quarantine of Iranian ports will cost Iran approximately $435 million per day in economic damage.The blockade also gives the president leverage to pressure Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Furthermore, Trump can incentivize Beijing to join him in this pressure campaign because he is now blocking Iranian energy exports to China, which receives 45 to 50 percent of its crude oil and 30 percent of its liquefied natural gas imports through the strait.Meanwhile, Trump is preparing for the second phase of his operation: a U.S.-led international escort mission.He is using the ceasefire to remove the mines that Iran planted (and then lost track of), allowing the U.S. Navy to establish a safe passage through the waterway. Once this work is complete, Trump can issue an ultimatum to Iran's leaders: if they do not reopen the Strait to all shipping, the United States will reopen it by military force, allowing passage for all commercial vessels except those originating from Iran.Consider what this means.Previously, Iran allowed only its own ships to pass through the Strait, but not those of the United States and its allies. Trump's plan would reverse this: U.S. and allied ships would be allowed through, but Iranian ships would not.Iran would now lose hundreds of millions of dollars daily in lost trade and revenue, instead of running a highly lucrative extortion operation by collecting up to $2 million per ship as "passage fees" for safe passage. Iran would be powerless to do anything about it.
If Iran fires on ships escorted by the United States, it will be responsible for breaking the ceasefire and thus unleashing the US military to unleash a barrage of fire on the regime once again. Nor can Iran's leaders be confident in the success of any attacks they launch on ships transiting the Strait. Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, has a plan to thwart Iranian attacks on commercial vessels using a combination of military strikes, counter-drone technology, and electronic warfare.In other words, Trump has completely reversed Iran's strategy for exploiting the Strait, and he has utterly embarrassed his critics, who had been praising Iran's ingenuity in using its control of the Strait to inflict a strategic defeat on Trump.Iran now suddenly looks neither ingenious nor victorious at all.The idea that Iran would prevail was absurd even before Trump’s sanctions. Since the start of major combat operations, the United States and Israel have destroyed 80 percent of Iran’s air defense systems, more than 450 ballistic missile storage facilities, more than 800 Shahed attack drone storage facilities, more than 2,000 command and control points, more than 90 percent of Iran’s navy, 95 percent of its mines, 90 percent of its weapons factories (including every factory that produced Shahed attack drones and drone guidance systems), 80 percent of its missile facilities and solid-fuel rocket engine production capacity, and 80 percent of its nuclear industrial base, according to U.S. Central Command. When the ceasefire ends, the combined force will destroy what remains.Iran is suffering what Cooper calls “a military defeat for a generation.” In less than 40 days, it has lost an army it built over 40 years. Its only remaining leverage was its control of the Strait of Hormuz, and now Trump has taken that away as well.
What is left for Iran to do? US military leaders had nearly two weeks of targets remaining when the ceasefire began. For Iran to be completely militarily paralyzed, those targets must be destroyed before the war is over. When the ceasefire is due to end a week from now, Trump should direct Cooper to eliminate what remains of Iran's exhausted forces and defensive industrial capacity. He should then either capture Kharg Island or lay siege to it And use it as a pressure card to get Iran to hand over what the president calls its nuclear "dust." If Iran refuses, Trump must destroy Kharg, so that the regime has no resources to rebuild, and initiate a process to seize nuclear materials or impose our control over them ourselves. With these final steps, the president can bring the war to a decisive end - and achieve a victory that even Trump's most intolerant critics cannot deny.
+ Mark Thiessen writes a column for The Washington Post on foreign and domestic policy, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush
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