US Marines and paratroopers who could be sent to seize an Iranian island in the Gulf will be thrust into a “shooting gallery” with vulnerable supply lines and ill-defined strategic objectives, former US military officials and analysts tell Middle East Eye.
A US invasion would start with a campaign to jam electronic equipment and radar in the area, followed by an intense bombing campaign.
“The US will have to do a preparation and isolation effort first,” Seth Krummrich, the former chief of staff for US special operations in the Middle East, told MEE.
Electronic warfare would be followed by “preparatory” strikes to destroy defences, added Krummrich, who is now a senior executive at the private security firm Global Guardian.
The US could try to take several islands, but there are three real contenders.
Kharg is at the top of the list. The island lies across from Kuwait and is home to facilities from which Iran exports around 90% of its oil.
Abu Musa and two smaller associated islands sit in the centre of the Gulf. The former Shah of Iran seized them in 1971, but the UAE, a close ally of the US and Israel, claims them.
Another potential target is Qeshm. This would be the toughest grab because it’s the largest and home to a tunnel network where Iran houses drones and missiles.
Around 150,000 Iranians live on the island, which sits a short swim away from the port of Bandar Abbas. Iran has been rerouting vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz between Qeshm and Larak, an island next door.
Invasion by air more likely than sea
The WWII battles for Okinawa and Iwo Jima, where marines waded ashore in the Pacific, are oft-repeated events when analysts discuss US island warfare. But Daniel Davis, a former US Army lieutenant colonel, told MEE that the initial US invasion force would likely come from the air because of Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.
“I don’t see any way in hell that you are going to get the USS Boxer or the USS Tripoli through the Strait of Hormuz,” he told MEE, referring to the two amphibious assault ships that are bringing thousands of US marines to the region. The vessels carry smaller landing and hovercraft.
“There is only one real possibility, and that’s by air,” said Davis, who is a senior fellow at Defence Priorities, a Washington, DC, think tank.
The US would likely use V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters to ferry US soldiers to their destination.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the US can achieve its war aims without ground troops, but the US is still sending a fighting force to the region.
Two marine expeditionary units, totalling around 2,500 troops, are nearing the Middle East. In addition, 3,000 paratroopers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division are being mobilised.
Kalev Sepp, a former US special forces officer, now at the US Naval Postgraduate School, told MEE that a US invasion force would likely depend on basing in Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Kuwait.
“They can’t do this without neighbouring Gulf states giving them access to bases,” he told MEE.
MEE reported that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are inching closer to supporting the US-Israeli war on Iran. The UAE has publicly rejected any ceasefire that enshrines the status quo with Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has been less muscular in its public statements, but has given the US expanded access to airspace and bases.
Davis, at Defence Priorities, said that US troops arriving by helicopter would be vulnerable to shoulder-launched air-defence systems, drones and even small arms and RPG fire.
“I’d wager on a helicopter insertion from the UAE,” Davis said. “But Iran can read a map too, so they will be ready for it.”
‘Harder than the 1982 Falklands invasion’
The last time a western invading force tried to seize islands close to a country’s mainland was 1982, when Britain retook the Falklands from Argentina. The latter’s air force inflicted serious damage on British ships during the amphibious landing.
The US and Israel maintain that Iran’s air force and navy have been decimated by US and Israeli air strikes, but it has ballistic missiles and drones to attack a US invading force.
Iran’s islands are also much closer to the mainland than the Falklands are to Argentina, which makes them easier to defend from the mainland, even with traditional artillery.
“As hard as the Falklands were for the British, it’s even more difficult now for the US because of the geographic compression of the Gulf and developments in drone warfare,” Sepp told MEE.
Few experts believe that Iran would be able to stop a US invading force from landing. But once American Marines or paratroopers arrive, they will face resistance. Kharg, and particularly Qeshm, provide terrain for Iranian soldiers to hide and attack US forces.
“Iran will lean further into its mosaic defence,” Ruben Stewart, a senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told MEE.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps instituted this decentralised command structure after seeing how the US quickly defeated Saddam Hussein’s top-down military in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The mosaic defence has been on display throughout the current war. The IRGC has 31 different commands – one for each province – with officers having autonomy to launch missiles and drones on their own. The IRGC can be broken down into even smaller branches.
“They will lean into guerrilla warfare and won’t allow the Americans to draw them out in the open,” Stewart said.
The US has been pummelling Iran from sea, land and air for three weeks. It would have to refocus its strikes to defend Marines and paratroopers on the ground.
“We are talking about an air and naval force that has been operating at an intense tempo for weeks now,” Stewart said. “They will be stretched thin supporting troops on the ground.”
‘A Bridge Too Far’
Once US troops establish a beachhead, they will need to be sustained with food, medical supplies and ammunition. The US would also likely want to bring in rocket launchers, armoured cars and even air defence systems, Steward said. Wounded soldiers would also need to be ferried back to ships or the Gulf for treatment.
“There is the issue of supporting personnel once they are there. It’s a considerable problem. These troops need to be sustained with food, fuel, ammunition, and medical supplies,” Sepp, at the US Naval Postgraduate School, said.
“The rough number used to calculate logistical support is nine personnel for every one soldier in combat,” he said. “That doesn’t include maritime control and air cover.”
To be sure, the US has a network of bases across the Gulf, in addition to warships, to support troops.
But the US’s bases in the Gulf have been exposed as vulnerable to Iranian strikes.
MEE reported that the US sought access to the King Fahd base in western Saudi Arabia recently. Prince Sultan Air Base in eastern Saudi Arabia has been hit by Iranian strikes, according to satellite imagery.
A recent New York Times report suggests that most of the 13 regional bases have been damaged by Iranian strikes to the extent of rendering them uninhabitable.
The Marines and 82nd Airborne are the tip of the spear for the US military. They are used to establish a beachhead for a larger invading force. History is full of cautionary examples of what happens when those forces are overextended.
“These forces are very good at securing a foothold because they are extremely light and can move quickly. The moment they become static, they become a target that needs to be protected and supplied,” Davis said.
“It would be a shooting gallery,” he said.
Stewart pointed to the failure of Operation Market Garden in WWII when paratroopers tried to bypass Nazi Germany’s defences, primarily in the Netherlands, but were pushed back.
“A Bridge Too Far is a classic case of airborne forces that get a foothold, but can’t sustain it. That can play out in the Gulf because they are under the umbrella of Iranian missiles and drones,” he said, referring to the 1977 movie starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine that popularised that military debacle.
Iran on offence
Iran could also go on the offensive. An Iranian security analyst said this week that Tehran is ready to capture the coastlines of Bahrain and the UAE. While analysts dismissed that possibility to MEE, they said it can escalate in other theatres.
“The Houthis have yet to enter this conflict. I’d imagine that one possibility is that Iran is waiting to activate them in case of a further US escalation, which an invasion would be,” Michael Stephens, an expert at the Royal United Service Group, told MEE.
The Bab al-Mandeb Strait has emerged as a critical artery for millions of barrels of Saudi Arabian oil that are being exported by a pipeline bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. If the Houthis decide to attack vessels in the Red Sea, it could further spike energy prices.
Krummrich said Iran could also escalate across the Gulf. “If the US were to grab Kharg Island, for example, Iran could absolutely unload on more desalination plants, power stations, natural gas sites and oil sites,” he said.
Krummrich says there is little the US could gain by seizing most Iranian islands, but taking Kharg Island would be “primarily for economic reasons”.
“You would give the Iranian regime a difficult problem to solve. Do you launch some missile, drone and artillery strikes against your crown jewel, knowing that you might kill some marines or airborne soldiers, but you are going to cripple your economic lifeline,” he said, noting its importance as an oil export hub.
But Iran might do so willingly if it wanted to inflict more global economic pain, experts say.
Meanwhile, taking islands such as Qeshm or Abu Musa would offer little strategic benefit to the US in its efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Sepp said.
“They don’t offer any benefit that the US doesn’t already have with bases in the Gulf”.
Source: MEE
