A US move on Iran’s Kharg Island would be a high-risk military gamble that could escalate rapidly and destabilise global energy.

Described by analysts as a suicide mission, there are nonetheless rumours the US president has his eye on securing for the long-term the Iranian oil facilities on Kharg Island.

“Just take the oil” has long been Trump’s motto. But could the sacrifice of a Marine expeditionary force be a price the 47th President thinks is worth paying?

Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf – or some other target the Americans choose to fling thousands of Marines at – may be the moment when we see a huge increase in servicemen dying for the US-Israeli empire. Throwing a first wave of Marines onto the sacrificial altar of Iran’s shores may be a deliberate act by Trump to dupe a gullible and patriotic US population into believing that more war, more killing is now justified. I hope not. But the US elites are so dark and desperate that piles of Marine body bags may seem a good investment to swing the popular mood towards war. Again, I hope not. How long can people fall for this stuff?

One thing is certain: the Iranians know the empire will not turn back home unless compelled to do so and will fight with tremendous skill and courage to defeat the invaders. Nationalism – the love of one’s country – is such a powerful thing that, in the words of a compatriot of mine, “it banishes fear with the speed of a flame and makes us all part of the patriot game.”

But enough poetry, here are a few hard facts. Iran has a well-trained army of over 600,000 men. They have hundreds of thousands of militia members, many of them combat veterans of theatres like Syria and Iraq. They have 350,000 reservists. Yes, they have 1,500 battle tanks, but more deadly to American forces are likely to be the thousands of artillery systems that are the centrepiece of Iran’s land defences and have yet to see action. Wherever the Americans and Israeli invaders attack, hundreds of artillery pieces will be trained on them, and thousands of drones will, as in the Russia-Ukraine war, make progress slow and bloody.

Every day the US President and Secretary of War tell us that Iran’s military potential has been, to use Trump’s favourite word, “obliterated”. Every day the Iranians hit sites across the Middle East and have yet to deploy a single of their cruise missiles which US analysts say they hold in large numbers.

How could the Americans get to Kharg Island near the bottom of the pocket of the Persian Gulf? If it is a seaborne assault, they might charge through the Strait of Hormuz, traveling 1000km along the Iranian coast in vessels under a blizzard of fire. Or they could force an Arab country to submit to an expeditionary force moving through their territory.

Assembling the troops and the landing craft would be a huge, highly visible operation that would invite Iranian short-range missile and drone attacks that could wreak havoc before they even get near Iran. Choppers and parachutes would be a frightening way to make land.

The Iranians have made clear, if the Americans take or destroy Kharg Island, they will turn the region’s energy facilities into ashes. They showed their potential after the Israelis attacked the Pars gas field last week, striking back within a couple of hours and taking out 20 per cent of the world’s biggest LNG production trains at Ras Laffan.

Hours after the US-Israelis attacked the Natanz nuclear facility (I thought that had been ‘obliterated’ last year?) Iran pierced Israel’s missile defence shield and dropped a warning note – a massive missile – a few kilometres from Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. World energy will be in turmoil for years if the Americans attack and Iran makes good on their threats.

Alternatively, the US-Israeli invasion force might hit the beaches near the Pakistani-Iranian border – or somewhere entirely different.  There has been recent noise about smaller islands closer to the Strait of Hormuz. Wherever they choose, they will be met by Iranians who will be fighting on home territory and for their homeland.

Another consideration are the civilians. Kharg Island, for example, is home to 10,000 of them. As we have learnt over the decades – from Korea and Vietnam through to the genocide in Gaza – the US and Israel have utter contempt for civilians lives. For example, in the Russia-Ukraine war, child deaths represent somewhere between 1 per cent and 3.6 per cent of the total killed in Ukraine in 2025, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNICEF. The UN says about 43 civilians are being killed per week in Ukraine. In Gaza, the UN Human Rights Office found that children and women accounted for nearly 70 per cent of the total deaths, evenly split between women and children.

Nothing makes sense about the US attack on Iran. Nor do we really know what Trump has in mind for Kharg Island. If he succeeds in seizing it, will he ever willingly give it back?  There are clues. I will give the last word to Donald J Trump. In a televised address at CIA headquarters in 2017 Trump lamented that the US let the Iraqis hold on to their oil after the Gulf War. 

“We should have kept the oil. But OK, maybe we’ll have another chance."