An Invasion of Kharg Island is MUCH Harder than it Sounds.

Iran’s K Island is the ultimate bargaining chip.

Sitting 25 km off the Iranian coast, the island is known for its historical monastery and temples, its incredible archaeological finds and oil refinery that just happens to handle up to 90% of all Iranian oil exports.

For Ir, its allies, and especially its adversaries, the value of Kag Island is obvious.

Control the island, and you could throttle Iran’s oil dependent economy.

Capture the island intact, and another nation could make Iran do anything to get it back.

destroy it outright and Iran would transform from a powerful rogue nation into an economic afterthought.

And that’s if we’re being generous.

As the United States and Israel wage war against Iran, it should be no surprise that Carg Island has become an object of fixation for US President Donald Trump, a world leader with the military power to seize the island and bring Iran to its knees.

Right now, thousands of US Marines and army paratroopers are inbound to the Middle East, and there’s a strong possibility that K Island is their ultimate target.

But as Uncle Sam directs his hungry gaze toward the crown jewel of the Iranian economy, America and its allies would do well to remember, it’s a lot harder to take Car Island in real life than it was in the Battlefield 3 or the Delta Force games.

In fact, if the United States intends to take Car Island using only the forces traveling to the Middle East today, then there’s a real chance that the island could be the place that America endures its worst military defeat in generations.

Just a quick note before we continue.

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And now back to today’s video, The Target.

Now, before we can understand what it means to attack Kar Island, we have to start by discussing Kag Island itself.

Despite the world’s intense focus on the straight of Hormuz, Kar Island is located in the northern Persian Gulf, much closer to the Gulf’s Iraqi shoreline than the Indian Ocean.

While it’s a mere 25 km from the closest point on the Iranian coastline, Kar Island is around 60 km from the city of Busher, the site of Iran’s sole nuclear power plant and the country’s most important commercial port.

Just 180 km from Basher is the major city of Shiraz, home to about 1.

6 million people, a major refinery, and the economic center that southern Iran relies on.

What that means in a practical sense is that the export facilities on Kar Island are the most important site in one of Iran’s most important regions, meaning that the region is especially important to the Iranian military.

This is a region with a well-developed civilian infrastructure, a large presence from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC, and most likely the hidden weapons stockp match.

Then there’s the island itself, a low-lying coral crop with an elevation of just 70 m at its highest point.

With a land area of roughly 20 square km, K Island is basically flat, basically triangular in shape and surrounded by deep waters to enable the transit of oil tankers.

The island is not home to any substantial vegetation or other territorial obstructions except for relative high grounds near its southern edge.

It does, however, have its own supply of fresh water.

The island’s coastline is mostly sandy and gradually sloped, making it an ideal candidate for an amphibious landing.

While the island is located near several offshore oil fields, it is not the site of any onshore oil production.

Instead, the island is host to the major oil terminal we mentioned earlier, a sprawling facility that takes up the majority of the island’s available land area.

That’s mostly because of the island’s topography.

The waters off most of the Iranian coast are shallow and rocky, and from Iran’s vantage point, it was easier to just route the vast majority of oil exports to Car Island than try and construct new deep water ports off the mainland.

To give you an idea of the size of the operations on the island, the land mass hosts Car City, a restricted access area that’s home to roughly 8,200 long-term or semi-permanmanent residents.

The island receives oil transfers from the Iranian mainlands through a network of submarine pipelines.

And it’s also fed through pipelines running directly to KG from a trio of offshore oil fields, bypassing the Iranian coast entirely.

Once crude oil reaches the island, storage space can accommodate up to 28 million barrels at a given time.

That crude oil is then refined on site before being transferred to the export terminal where Iran boasts the capacity to host and load 10 petroleum super tankers at once.

Operating at full capacity, Car Islands can export up to 1.

6 6 million barrels of oil each day.

Of course, the people in charge of K Island are well aware that Iran is currently at the heart of a major regional conflict.

And as such, the island is not the same today as it was prior to the start of the war.

Across late 2025 and early 2026, Iran offloaded oil from Kag Islands much faster than the terminal accepted new shipments with a very high proportion of that oil traveling toward China.

As of now, exports from K Island have slowed down dramatically, although Iranian ships are still able to transit the straight of Hormuz and have been left alone by US and other foreign naval vessels.

While the island did host a substantial military presence prior to the war, including forces based at K Island and its 18800 meter runway, those forces took a beating from the United States Air Force on the 13th of March.

On that day, US Central Command claimed that it had targeted over 90 Iranian military sites across the island.

Although according to both Iran and the US, the island’s oil infrastructure was spared.

The US indicated that it destroyed quote naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers, and multiple other military sites.

US President Donald Trump claimed that the military forces based on the islands were quote totally obliterated.

As of the time of writing, the extent of the surviving military infrastructure on Kar Island is unknown, assuming any infrastructure has survived at all.

Satellite imagery obtained after the strike reveals that exports are still ongoing while blast damage is visible at several locations.

And there’s one final question to ask about the island itself.

Although by now we suspect that the answer might be obvious.

Why would the United States want to capture it? And in a word, of course, it’s leverage.

By seizing control of K Island, the US would be able to use it as a bargaining chip to essentially hold the Iranian economy hostage.

The US could control the docking and loading of oil tankers.

It could shut down the island’s refinery.

It could obstruct or cut off access to pipelines, and it could even threaten to destroy the facility itself unless Iran complies with American demands.

According to recent reports by Axio, citing multiple well-placed US officials, the island is among the prime candidates for what American planners are calling a quote final blow to end the conflict.

While the US is purportedly considering attacks against other islands near the straight of or a blockade or the seizure of Iranian ships leaving the straight, the capture of K Island would deliver unparalleled leverage for Washington.

According to those Axio sources, Washington’s intent is to launch an operation so decisive that Iran would have no choice but to negotiate.

And if the United States believed that such an operation is feasible, then Car Island is the obvious first choice.

The defenses Unfortunately for America’s top military minds, there’s a well-worn expression about military operations like these.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Originally, that quote is attributed to 19th century Prussian general Phil Marshall Helmouth von Malta the Elder, which by the way is a very appropriate name for a 19th century Prussian general.

But much like the conflicts of Moist time, the conflicts of the modern day have a tendency to get very messy very quickly, especially when a powerful attacking force goes into a complex, risky ground operation, believing that it’s already secured the upper hands.

Now, before we get into any of the details on an Iranian defense of Car Island, we’ve got to make one thing clear.

For America to actually secure this island and turn it into a strategic bargaining chip, it’s going to have to do more than simply raising the red, white, and blue over the central refinery.

In the event that the United States did attempt to seize Car Island, they would face resistance in actually reaching the island and attempted to capture it.

We’ll talk about the finer points of that resistance in just a moment, but the bulk of Iran’s defense of K Island won’t actually involve stopping America from taking the territory.

Instead, Iran’s defense of the island will only truly begin once the island has already been seized.

Iran will be guided by the same tactical and strategic rationale that it’s relied upon across the rest of this conflict.

that by using missiles, drones, and any other munitions that can reach a given target, Iran’s goal is to impose costs.

Iran doesn’t care about winning head-to-head battles, and in fact, it would rather avoid those battles entirely because it understands that its adversaries, especially the United States, are far less willing to accept losses or damage than Iran itself.

But before we get into any detailed discussion of what that looks like, we’ll start with the resistance Iran would offer against a seizure operation by the United States.

That defense will start at relatively long range where Iran will deploy anti-ship cruise missiles, aerial kamicazi drones, and even more dangerous sea drones to try and hit any ships approaching by sea.

The extent of Iran surviving weapon stockpiles is unknown, but judging by Iran’s ability to continue to strike targets across the Middle East at long range, Iran clearly hasn’t run out of those weapons completely.

Iran will also employ static defenses, specifically sea mines, that it can deploy on just hours notice before an American landing force arrives.

The forces that the US or any nation would need to amass on the water for an operation like this are very substantial.

Iran will see them coming before they arrive, especially with the benefit of intelligence supplied by Russia and China, as currently seems to be the case.

Forces coming in from the air like paratroopers or close air support are another story.

Iran lacks the ability to meaningfully contest control of the skies.

And while low-flying aircraft will be at greater risk of attack from shoulder fired missiles and other weaponry Iran may have at its disposal, the US will be able to partially offset that risk through air strikes operating its own real-time intelligence to hit Iranian defenses.

Iran’s concentration of ground forces on Kag Island is currently unknown.

Both because Iran wasn’t really in the mood to give out that sort of information even before America’s air strikes, and because after the air strikes, it’s not clear how many Iranian soldiers or how much of their fighting equipment would have survived.

Most likely any heavy equipment that was stationed on the island will no longer be available.

And the specific US claim on destroyed Iranian targets, over 90 of them to be precise, would suggest that the US may have been able to target decentralized hidden supply caches across the island.

Some of Iran’s hidden supplies will most likely have survived, meaning that soldiers, paramilitaries, and possibly even island inhabitants who are willing to fight back could all participate in an organized resistance to a US landing.

According to a recent CNN report, Iran is also working to beef up its island defenses in the wake of US air strikes on March the 13th.

Iran is working to lay anti-armour and anti-personnel mines, including on the island shores while reinforcing what appears to be a layered air defense system to protect Kark against attacks from above.

Without any doubt, any amphibious or parachute landing on the island will be preceded by intense aerial bombardments.

The trouble with bombardments, however, is that aircraft inevitably miss things, while surveillance fails to pick up on defenses or weapon stockpiles that have been well hidden.

There’s no telling what the US will destroy and what it’ll fail to pick up on, but some of those mines and air defenses will survive, raising the possibility that they could claim the lives of US troops or shoot down vulnerable non-stalthy low-flying aircraft.

That said, Kog will not be an easy place to defend once US ground forces have established a foothold.

Iranians on the island will either be left exposed or be forced to use refinery infrastructure as cover unless they allow themselves to be pushed into the island town where most residents live.

It’s after the United States takes control and radios back news of their victory to Washington that the real trouble for US troops may begin.

Of course, we should emphasize there’s a chance that Tran will do what the United States seems to believe it will.

See America’s control of the island and immediately call for ceasefire negotiations.

But Iran’s actions to this point in the conflict reveal a very different modus operandi.

Iran’s objective is not victory in any conventional sense.

Tran is able to accept the deaths of its political and military leaders and the destruction of its cities and mass casualties among its soldiers, paramilitaries, and civilian supporters.

Iran’s focus is on regime survival, not the survival of the people who make up the regime, but the survival of the regime itself.

To be clear, if the US were to capture and hold Car Island for the long term, Iran would face complete economic ruin.

But if the United States is going to impose that ruin on Iran, then it will need weeks or even months in order to do so.

During this conflict, Iran’s strategic understanding of the United States has been consistent and unnervingly accurate.

The American public is not willing to accept the loss of American troops, and it is not willing to accept long-term or severe economic pain just to see the Islamic Republic overthrown.

Regardless of what the Trump administration may want, the American public, the American markets, and a large share of Trump’s own voting base just don’t value this war very much.

For Iran, however, the war is everything.

And as of the time of writing, Iran has consistently made the bet that it can force the United States and its allies to blink first.

If that’s how Iran responds to the capture of K Island, then America’s initial takeover will be the easy part.

The first problem that the US would have to account for is the Iranian ground forces.

combination of roughly 350,000 soldiers in the Iranian army, about 150,000 soldiers across the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and another several hundred,000 paramilitary fighters of the Besiege Resistance Force.

Those ground forces have been mostly left out of the current conflict unless they’re getting bombed from above or they’re launching missiles and drones.

And they are beyond ready to get into the fight after a very frustrating few weeks on the sidelines.

It’s going to be difficult for those forces to reach Car Island on mass and conduct a counter landing against the United States after such a high proportion of Iran’s navy has been destroyed or put out of commission.

But Iranian forces are nothing if not creative and they are highly motivated to accept risk to their own lives in order to deliver damage to an adversary.

Everything from ordinary speedboats to fishing vessels to tugboats could be commandeered for improvised small unit attempts to land on the beach and harass US forces.

Much more dangerous will be their artillery pieces.

None of those weapons have enough of a range to hit Iran’s Middle Eastern adversaries, but they all have the range to hit K Island just off the Iranian coast.

That’s not to mention the possibility that Iran may be able to use shorter range aerial drones similar to ones being used in Russia and Ukraine, potentially using fiber optic cables to get around jamming technology.

Of course, there’s a trade-off here that Iranian troops would have to consider.

If Iranian forces can get their long range artillery or their unconventional landing boats in range to threaten K Island, then America can see them and America is going to try its very best to destroy them.

Even still, those weapons can pose a very real threat to US forces once they’ve landed.

And they’re also going to come back and be even more relevant in a later phase of today’s discussion.

Then there are the munitions that Iran will be sending from further out, the one-way aerial attack drones and the cruise and ballistic missiles that it can launch from anywhere in Iranian territory.

Again, it’s not clear how much of these sorts of weaponry that Iran has left, but it is clear that Iran’s got enough to pose a threat even to targets much further away than K Island.

Speaking of range, Iran possesses substantial stockpiles of shorter range missiles and drones, weapons that can’t be used to threaten Israel, the Gulf States, or US bases in the region.

Here at Warfronts, we can’t speak to the US or Israel’s targeting policies, but we can take an educated guess and assume both nations have focused their attention on longer range munitions and launchers that would pose a more immediate threat.

But if Iran has, let’s say, significant stockpiles of drones with a 100 km radius, then those drones are going to be a massive problem for troops on Kar Island because they can be launched anywhere on Iranian soil within a 100 km radius.

Those munitions will destroy the air defense systems, the fixed position radar, and the other critical equipment that the US will need to keep its forces on K Island safe.

At short range, helps Iran in more ways than one.

When targets are that close, it might only take a couple of minutes for weapons to be taken out of storage, prepared for launch, and fired with only a couple of minutes more before they hit their target.

That means they are harder for reconnaissance and surveillance to find and track.

and they’re easier to slip through air defenses, especially in the early phases where an American air defense shield over the islands might not be complete.

For the United States and Israel during this conflict, distance has mostly equated to safety from Iranian weapons.

And even operating at this distance, their task has hardly been easy.

Last week, the New York Times reported that several US military bases have already been severely damaged by Iranian drones and missiles, rendering some of those bases, especially in Kuwait, uninhabitable.

Move US troops to a location as close to Iran as K Islands in a situation where those troops, their fighting vehicles and equipment, and their ships or aircraft have only a limited ability to get away or protect themselves and they are sitting ducks.

Now, next up, what we want to do is discuss the challenges that the US will have to overcome before it’s even in a position to deal with the problems that we’ve already discussed.

But before we get there, we’d like to take a moment to discuss Front Sto.

co, which is our team’s premium website, written news outlet, and one-stop shop for global conflict analysis.

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And now back to Car Island.

The Outer Walls.

So Iran can harass and challenge the United States’s attempts to take over K Island.

and it can bombard, raid, and otherwise attack US troops once they’re positioned on the island.

But those two rings of defense, so to speak, are the rings that America will encounter only after its forces get to Kag Island.

There’s another ring of defenses that Washington would have to account for.

The straight of Muz the other outlying islands across Iran and the Iranian mainland itself.

We’re going to discuss America’s force composition in its own chapter in just a few more minutes, but for now, suffice to say that we know what the United States is going to attack with.

The US is deploying airborne assault units or paratroopers.

It’s deploying special operators and daredevil helicopter pilots.

But the bulk of its attacking force is expected to comprise two marine expeditionary units, each sailing into the region on amphibious assault ships.

When they arrive, those US Marines will most likely be tasked with a beach landing.

That’s what they’re trained for.

It’s what their ships are designed for, and it’s a task that their fleet seems ready to accomplish.

But in order to get those amphibious landing forces to K Island, you’ve first got to get them through the straight of which means that under the current circumstances, you’ve got to fight your way through the straightforwards.

If you can’t, then those marine units don’t make it to Car Island and the US is stuck with whatever forces they can drop, highly vulnerable and probably outnumbered from a fleet of tactical airlifters that Iran can target relatively easily, or worse, low-flying helicopters.

For the purposes of today’s episode, we aren’t going to spend time on the disaster that a purely airborne operation would be with troop numbers that are so limited that the problems we’ll discuss later in this episode would be impossible to solve.

Taking the straight of is a very difficult task in its own right.

So difficult that as of now the US hasn’t attempted to do it and has instead taken to berating members of NATO because they won’t do it.

The straight is only about 50 km wide at its narrowest points, well within range of all those nasty weapons we’ve already talked about being fired from the Iranian mainland.

Iran is known to have laid sea mines in the area already and would very likely manage to lay more if it seems that the US is going to try to capture the waterway.

Iran possesses over a thousand small fast attack craft to harass ships trying to enter.

And those fast boats are mostly concentrated near the straight.

Although it’s not clear how many of those ships are still operable.

To deal with all those problems at once, the US would need more naval vessels than it’s currently got deployed in the Gulf of Aman, including dedicated mine sweeper vessels that are mostly unavailable.

And if the US really wanted to ensure that the strait was under control, it would have to capture at least some of the Iranian coastline, demanding a fair share of ground forces at America’s disposal.

If you remember when a few minutes ago we referenced those many hundreds of thousands of Iranian ground forces that are itching to get into the fight.

This is where they become extremely relevant.

They can’t reach Car Island once it’s taken over, unless they’re brave or stupid enough to try and do a beach landing from a fishing boat.

But they can concentrate their power across coastal areas of the Iranian mainland.

And if the US has to dedicate its naval power to securing the straight for long enough to allow an invasion of Kar Island, then it can forget about escorting trade ships out of the Persian Gulf anytime soon.

According to expert estimates, those crossings are so risky that the US and its allies could have to dedicate a warship or maybe even two warships for every tanker that’s guided through.

If the US wants to try and do it in convoys, then to move 10 tankers, the US needs a dozen warships and that kind of naval power just is not available in the region right now.

But let’s say that the US does make that decision.

It opens the straight form and secures the Iranian coastline long enough for these amphibious assault groups to slip through.

And while we’re at it, let’s assume that the US manages to hold the straight since capturing the straight and then letting it go again doesn’t make very much strategic sense.

Then those US ships need to get past Iran’s other outlying islands in the Persian Gulf and avoid whatever munitions might have been hidden on those.

Then if the US wants to land troops on K Island and keep them safe from all those artillery shells, rockets, missiles, drones, and raiders we were talking about before, then the United States can do that.

But the way to accomplish that task quickly is by capturing even more coastline.

This time by taking and holding a buffer zone around the shore nearest island.

That raises the problem once again of the Iranian ground forces.

This time in an economically critical, infrastructurally developed area where Iranian troops will be present in large numbers with the ability to navigate the landscape and maneuver quickly.

And regardless of what the United States ultimately does or doesn’t choose to capture, it’s got to sustain its operations in every place where it decides to hold territory.

And if it concedes territory after taking it or decides not to capture all that territory after all, then it’ll be a sign to Iranian forces that they can risk pressing their offensive further.

After all, if the US can’t hold the straight of Hormuz, Iran’s nearby islands, Car Islands, and the coastlines near K and near the straight, then Iran will have confirmed that America either can’t stretch itself that far or isn’t willing to try.

the attacking force.

At this point in the episode, we’d imagine that there’s probably some portion of our viewing audience, hello, we appreciate you.

Thank you for watching, who’s probably wondering why we’re underrating the American military so badly.

After all, while the US hasn’t exactly shown itself to be a bunch of competent nation builders, American forces are extremely competent when on offense.

American air power is the best in the world.

American naval power is the best in the world.

And anyone on Earth who’s willing to go toe-to-toe with the Marines in an amphibious environment clearly doesn’t know who the Marines are.

But the limiting factor for the United States isn’t competence.

It’s the number of troops at America’s disposal to pull this off.

When it comes to military occupations, size does matter, and the US ground forces currently on route to the Middle East just are numerous enough to take on an operation like this.

There are enough troops inbound to seize Kar Island if Car Island existed in a neat little vacuum.

There was nothing to fear from the outside world.

But that simply isn’t the case.

And for the US to force its way through the straight of Hormuz without actually capturing it just to take K Island and pay no attention to the threats across the surrounding region would be incredibly risky.

As we’ve mentioned, the bulk of the US force that’s inbound to the region today is split between two Navy amphibious ready groups and the Marine Expeditionary Units traveling on board each.

Those two groups of ships are carrying at least 3,000 Marines in total and possibly closer to 5,000 along with the many thousands of Navy sailors required to operate the ships themselves.

The first of those Marine expeditionary units will have already arrived in the region by the time this episode is released.

Although, if you’re seeing this episode at all, it’s because those forces haven’t attacked yet.

The second group is expected to arrive sometime around April 8th, at which time the US will have to either tell them to sit tight or start to clear the way into the Persian Gulf.

Also on route to the region is the 82nd Airborne Division, comprising around 1500 paratroopers who trained rigorously for short Lotus deployments on the expectation that they’ll seize contested areas behind enemy lines.

The current members of the 82nd haven’t ever parachuted into a conflict in real life conditions before.

The unit last executed a combat jump during the 1989 invasion of Panama.

They’re very well practiced, but they’re also light units and so are the US Marines inbound to the region.

That means they don’t travel with tanks or large numbers of infantry fighting vehicles.

According to some sources, the US is looking to deploy additional special operations units to the region, including Army Rangers, naval special warfare teams, and even the Delta Force, the uber elite ultra competent raiders, who most recently snatched Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro from his fortified bedroom.

The US also may deploy its nightstalkers, specialized, and extraordinarily skilled helicopter pilots who specialize in extremely risky insertion and extraction operations.

But in total, if we’re being really really optimistic about the numbers of troops that the US will deploy, that’s only about 8,000 ground troops from several branches of the military with several different specializations.

All of them are very expensive, highly trained, high-value units representing immense investment of time and resources by the United States, not to mention immense numbers of lives put at risk.

And while 8,000 troops is nothing to take lightly, that simply isn’t enough to hold K Island, plus the nearby Iranian coastline, plus whatever else needs to be captured and hell to maintain control over the straight of 8,000 is more than enough to capture the island itself.

But by capturing the island and nothing else, the US would be sending 8,000 highly valuable war fighters to squat on a very vulnerable exposed landmass.

Send them to the Iranian coast on a mission that would ostensibly make K Island a safer place to occupy.

And the amount of coastline those troops would need to capture and then defend from the sheer number of Iranian ground troops who could show up and oppose them is just too much.

Nor are any of America’s allies going to come and help.

The nations of NATO have made it abundantly clear that they do not intend to put their own troops in harm’s way for this war.

And the same can be said for the nations of the Indoacific.

If the US could seize the straight form and hold it long enough for a NATO naval coalition to take over in a time of relatively reduced hostilities, then maybe those relief forces will allow US troops to move elsewhere.

But now we’re talking about a timeline of weeks, if not months.

Nor does Israel have any forces to spare.

The nation is trying to invade and occupy southern Lebanon while continuing to occupy the majority of Gaza while trying to keep order in the West Bank while sustaining its air campaign against Iran while defending the rest of Israeli controlled territory against other threats that might emerge.

The country doesn’t have enough troops to sustain those operations as its military leaders are openly admitting and it certainly doesn’t have an excess of ground troops that could go and help out the Marines on K Island.

The Gulf States might be a bit more willing but to put it gently they can’t keep up.

at least not in the high-paced multi-dimensional threat environments that an early occupying force would face.

Not to mention those Gulf states will be busy dealing with the inevitable massive retaliation that Iran will target toward their energy infrastructure, their population centers, and maybe even their dissalination plants.

Even occupying Car Island itself won’t be as easy as it sounds.

This is a place where thousands of people still live today.

And while some among a number are a part of the Iranian military, most of them aren’t.

That means that if the US does seize Kar Islands, it’ll also have to keep control of a civilian population, requiring intensive roundthe-clock guard and monitoring duties from the troops who have to remain there.

With such a large civilian population, the US would also run the risk of Iranian fighters slipping into whatever internment camps the US would be creating, demanding even more troops for security screenings, rapid response capabilities, and possibly to replenish losses from ambushers and lone gunmen.

That’s yet another problem that can only be fixed by siphoning people away from that total pool of available troops, 8,000 on the ground, if we’re being very generous.

As we conclude this section, we should mention that most recently, as of the time of writing, the Wall Street Journal reports that Washington may send an additional 10,000 ground troops to the Middle East to assist in a Car Island seizure or similar operation.

Those troops would be supplied with heavy armored vehicles.

That report was unconfirmed when this episode was written.

Although, if those troops are inbound by the time you see this episode, then you’ll be able to easily find record of that information through any number of news outlets.

But while those 10,000 troops would go a long way in addressing the problems we’ve laid out, there are still two key concerns we’ve got to mention.

First, an additional 10,000 troops may still not be enough if the US has to seize, occupy, and defend what would amount to a couple of hundred square kilometers of Iranian coastline between the areas near Kar Island and the areas near the straight of Formuz.

That is a huge amount of land to hold, especially with hundreds of thousands of Iranian foot soldiers barreling down on their positions.

seconds.

With a force that size and with the limitations of the aerial and seaborn transport capabilities that the US has available, it’s going to take several weeks at a minimum to get a force that size prepared, get them moved out to the Middle East and to then deploy them into combat.

It can be done and 10,000 extra troops would help, but how much that’d help is hard to say for sure.

The risks of overconfidence.

As we come to the conclusion of today’s episode, we trust that you see the quandry that the United States is walking into.

But what our warfronts team doesn’t trust is that the US and particularly the most gung-ho members of its political leadership truly understand what they’re signing up for.

With this White House, there’s always going to be a layer of McKismo and tough talk over every conversation.

But even taking that rhetorical slant into consideration, US leadership seems to have consistently underestimated Iran since before the start of the conflict.

Worse yet, it doesn’t seem as if the US is learning from those mistakes.

Yes, Trump tried to shift into negotiations very quickly after Iran threatened to destroy the Gulf States dalination plants, but otherwise, Trump and his administration appear to be caught up in the idea that they’ve already achieved victory.

Yeah, if this conflict had a scoreboard, then it’s true that the US and Israel score would be vastly higher than Iran’s.

But this is a war.

It’s not a game.

And for Iran, victory means survival.

The scoreboard does not matter as long as the Islamic Republic still stands.

And the Islamic Republic will still stand even if Kar Island were completely destroyed.

By our estimation, no nation would choose to try and seize Car Island in a ground invasion under these specific circumstances.

if they truly understood that reality.

If we take this US administration at its word, on the ways the Washington seems to understand this conflict and its role as a fighting force, then it seems that Trump and his allies believe they serve their interests with ground invasion of K Island.

They’re operating on the assumption that their so-called final blow against Iran will force the regime to the negotiating table on terms favorable to the United States.

They’re under pressure from Israel to continue the conflict for as long as possible, and they’re under pressure from the Gulf States to ensure that Iran’s capabilities are so thoroughly degraded that they could never threaten the region in this way again.

Despite what an overwhelming majority of US polls might say, despite the clear anxieties running through US markets, Trump and his inner circle seem to believe that those problems will go away if they can demonstrate enough strength and exert enough force to make Iraq capitulate.

Their logic is guided by a deep belief in American military might and an unimpeachable American strategic brilliance that during this conflict they’ve treated as a fundamental expectation rather than a set of advantages that the US has deliberately maintained through constant diligent effort for many decades.

All in all, Washington’s understanding its own incentives would seem to suggest that Washington believes a card invasion is worth trying.

But no matter what Trump and his allies believe, an invasion of K Island is dictated by three core realities.

Reality number one, capturing Car Island is not the same as securing Car Island as meaningful leverage over to Iran.

To turn the island into leverage, the US has to capture and hold other targets that then place its car forces out of harm’s way.

Reality number two, the United States simply does not have the required force concentration either in the Middle East or on its way to the Middle East to be confident that it can capture and hold all the necessary targets at once.

And reality number three, the United States cannot tolerate the deaths of large numbers of American troops in a war that the majority of Americans do not support and do not believe to be necessary.

As the time of writing, the US has acknowledged the deaths of 13 US service members.

And already that’s a major problem for the American public.

Trying to capture Car Island plus multiple stretches of the Iranian coastline with 8,000 troops or even 18,000 is a recipe for those losses to increase 10fold at a minimum.

And that’s if the United States is extraordinarily lucky.

The US cannot tolerate high troop losses without this war becoming politically untenable.

And Iran knows it.

Make no mistake, as soon as Iran has footage of American Marines and paratroopers dying grizzly, horrific deaths on Iranian soil, that footage will be published as often as possible in as many places as possible just to drive the costs of war home for the American people.

None of the nations in this conflict have any intention of fighting fair.

And when Iran plays dirty, that’s what it’s going to look like.

Iran can accept high troop losses.

It has no other choice but to accept high troop losses.

And if a US invasion of K Island is as poorly thought out and executed as it seems like it will be, then the United States is walking into a trap where Iran can bleed it dry and force Washington to capitulate.

It’s a grim assessment.

So Warfront team understands how hard it will be for some of our American viewers to hear, but it’s the truth.

War has changed too much and Iran is too good at this particular style of warfare for an invasion of K Island to go the way that Donald Trump thinks.