There’s a lot of talk about the Marines taking Kharg Island.
But the truth is the USS Tripoli, an America-class amphibious assault ship that carries the embarked 31st MEU, can’t get anywhere near the island—the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
To even try and enter the Persian Gulf is the kind of suicidal venture former Marine Commandant, General David Berger, warned about in his 2019 Commandants Planning Guidance, where he noted that “our Nation’s ability to project power and influence beyond its shores is increasingly challenged by long-range precision fires; expanding air, surface, and sub-surface threats; and the continued degradation of our amphibious and auxiliary ship readiness. The ability to project and maneuver from strategic distances will likely be detected and contested from the point of embarkation during a major contingency…it would be illogical to continue to concentrate our forces on a few large ships. The adversary will quickly recognize that striking while concentrated (aboard ship) is the preferred option.”
And yet here we are, seven years later, a prisoner of legacy doctrine and systems.
If Marines are to attempt to take Kharg Island, it will have to be an assault launched from ashore, not from the sea. Marines and their Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft will need to deploy to Kuwait or Bahrain, both of which are currently under attack from Iranian missiles and drones, and from their attempt an air assault.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because in May 1975, US Marines carried out a similar vertical envelopment on Koh Tang island in the Gulf of Thailand. Conceived as a rescue mission to free US merchant marine sailors taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge, the Marines instead found no prisoners, but lots of dug in Khmer Rouge fighters who ended up shooting down three of the eleven helicopters used in the initial landing, and heavily damaging five others. In the end, 38 Marines and US Air Force personnel were killed, and another 50 killed before the Marines had to be extracted under heavy fire. In the confusion of the final evacuation, three Marines were left on the island, and were subsequently captured and executed by the Khmer Rouge.
Any attempt to land Marines on Kharg Island will end in a disaster that would make Koh Tang island look like child’s play.
General David Berger knew this.
I wonder what the current Commandant, General Eric Smith, has to say about this? Back in 1990 the Marine Corps Commandant, General Al Gray, formed an ad hoc planning cell to challenge the plans being put together by General Norman Schwarzkopf to liberate Kuwait.
Does General Smith (@CMC_MarineCorps) possess the kind of intelligence and courage that General Gray had in standing up to bad ideas, or will he stand by silently as history repeats itself in the Persian Gulf, where the 31st MEU may find itself in a repeat of the Koh Tang debacle so Donald Trump can falsely declare victory over Iran.
Donald Trump has deployed thousands of US Marines to the Strait of Hormuz amid mounting fears that America is set to put troops on the ground as the world’s oil supply is strangled.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth approved a request by US Central Command for the deployment of a Marine expeditionary unit, typically including several warships and 5,000 troops, three officials told the Wall Street Journal.
The Japan-based USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship, and its attached Marines are now headed for the Middle East, where they join other Marines already in the fight, the officials said.
The war spiraled on Friday as the US death toll climbed to 13 troops, domestic gas prices soared to $3.60 per gallon and Iran‘s security chief Ali Larijani defiantly taunted Trump on the streets of Tehran.
The bolstered deployment comes as the Trump administration weighs seizing Iran’s Kharg Island, around 16 miles off the mainland in the Persian Gulf, which handles 90 percent of the Islamic regime’s fuel exports.
Trump told Fox News Radio Friday about taking control of the island: ‘It’s not high on the list, but it’s one of so many different things, and I can change my mind in seconds.’
At about 18 min Col. Douglas Macgregor enters. As of today, there is a distinct paucity of facts about the actual missile strikes and damage caused, so commentators are resorting to theory and history. I have only watched about 20 min of Macgregor and it is interesting because he knows a great deal about war and about that region. ABN
UPDATE: Macgregor has a lot to say and all of it is worth hearing. He provides a good argument/ prediction why USA will definitely not use nuclear weapons but Netanyahu might. If Netanyahu does use nukes, Macgregor says Israel will be destroyed by nukes either made in Iran or brought into Iran from Pakistan. There is no upside to this war. The sooner it ends the better. ABN
If this is true, we can be sure the core of the Deep State is Jewish Supremist. I am a realist and pragmatist, so I believe we have to work with that. All along I have been hoping Trump would not go this far, but he has. He is still president, so we have to work with that. I worry about too many of us dropping out due to something like this. The Deep State uses narratives to fool us because they have to have us go along with their plans. Monkeypox failed because no one bought it. Our best option is to be wise enough to turn much more of their evil into monkeypox. ABN
He is reading this speech, so no doubt about what it means. Israel did a MIHOP on 10/7, which killed thousands of Israelis, thus setting up their Deep State to destroy Gaza. The attack on Iran looks like the same ploy: Assault Iran, incur large enough MIHOP losses to justify using nuclear weapons. Obliterate Iran, probably leading to its territory being remapped into several smaller satrapies. That is speculation but surely something to keep in mind. If that strategy fails because Iran hits back even harder, or uses nukes, Israelis will move to Ukraine, which is now their next ‘land without people’ since most Ukrainians have been killed or fled. USA seems to be playing the big brother with no brain, doing whatever it is told to do. I seriously hope I am wrong about this. ABN
…President Trump proactively secured the border, targeted narcotraffickers, confronted narcoterrorists, targeted Mexican drug cartel leadership, leveraged the DOJ to indict regional actors, pushed China out of control in the Panama Canal, took out Nicholas Maduro, took control of Venezuela oil production – both for the security of the U.S. and benefit of the Venezuelan people, removed the discounted oil benefit for China and reasserted stability in the Western hemisphere.
Then, with all that in place, he turned toward Iran…. but, proactively planned for a ‘Shield of the Americas Summit’ before the Iran operation began and scheduled it while Operation Epic Fury continues.
This is but a snippet from a longer article which is well-worth reading. I largely agree with the snippet above and with what Trump appears to be doing in the Western Hemisphere so far. The timing of Trump’s actions is also appropriate, but the author of this essay seems to agree with the attack on Iran. I respect the website this essay comes from and view it every day because it often has good insights into USA politics. At the same time, Jewish Supremacy and its roles in USA and US policy is never mentioned. This is unfortunate and could be due to habitual blinders or something else. In today’s world Jewish Supremacy and its terrible harms to USA and the world cannot reasonably be ignored. One could say that JS and its followers have the power and opportunity to conquer Iran and Russia, so let them do it. That is not an entirely irrational thing to say. I am not in that camp, but this is a Kill-Or-Be-Killed (KOBK) world at the top and that is how the world has always been. A KOBK analysis of what is happening is a deep and gruesome one, but KOBK is also the very nature of elite reality. JS and others going for world domination probably see themselves as Alexander the Great, which if they succeed would sort of be true. It’s always a good idea to see any event from all points of view, including the JS POV. ABN
The Kurdish militias, based across the border in Iraq, began the offensive in northwestern Iran on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump on Sunday night spoke with the heads of Kurdish militant groups in Iraq to discuss the situation in Iran.
The CIA was exploring plans to arm the Kurdish forces with the aim of sparking a popular uprising in Iran, CNN reported Tuesday.
The Kurdish groups are widely seen as the most well-organized segment of the fragmented Iranian opposition and are believed to have thousands of trained fighters.
Their entry into the war could pose a significant challenge to the besieged authorities in Tehran and could also risk pulling Iraq further into the conflict.
Asked earlier about Kurdish involvement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters: ‘None of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force.
‘So, what other entities may be doing, we’re aware of, but our objectives aren’t centered on that.’
My guess is the US/Israeli goal is to divide Iran into smaller nations, which will be easier for them to control, while also posing less of a threat to Israel. The Ukraine War has been a similar event in that the ultimate goal is to dismember Russia and divide it into smaller nations. ABN
UPDATE: Most analysts are saying it is not possible for Israel/USA to break up Iran into smaller countries. Or to do that to Russia. But the long-term NATO encroachment against Russia has fundamentally had that goal in mind since the fall of the Soviet Union. We see the same goal for Iran today. I do see how they have failed in Ukraine and are failing in Iran, but their ace card is to use nukes in Iran and see what happens after that vis-a-vis Russia. The elitists doing this are hellbent on world domination and are still going for it now, just as they have been all along. In their minds, there is nothing to stop them from using nukes. Indeed, it seems probable that their strategy is to allow Iran to cause so much damage in Israel and the Gulf states that using nukes will strike many as a good move. At the core of this onslaught lies Jewish Supremacy, a hardheaded self-deceiving fanatical meta-cognitive doctrine couched in intransigent religious terms. Thirty to fifty million Americans have fallen for it along with a majority of Jews, many of whom have deeply infiltrated USA. ABN
American Buddhist Net 