Trump’s message on Kharg Island and the Strait of Hormuz
Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island. Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision. During my First Term, and currently, I rebuilt our Military into the Most Lethal, Powerful, and Effective Force, by far, anywhere in the World. Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — There is nothing they can do about it! Iran will NEVER have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East or, for that matter, the World! Iran’s Military, and all others involved with this Terrorist Regime, would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
It bears the stamp of his distinctive style. It remains to be seen how it will play out, but for now he has chosen to preserve the country’s oil capacities because its people will need them in the future.
The left and the NeverTrumpers on the “right” (I don’t think they’ve been on the actual right for quite some time, for the most part) have been claiming – among other things – that Trump and his advisors had no plan for the Strait. Tom Cotton has tried to set them – straight:
As Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, let me make clear: whoever leaked this lied. CNN should do some fact-checking. The U.S. has planned for Iran to try to close the strait for decades.
Because the left’s narrative is (among other things) that Trump and his military advisors are hopelessly, abysmally, stupid, they can claim that Trump has never planned for this very obvious thing. And many people will believe it.
Whether the plans will work is quite another thing. I certainly hope they will.
However, I came across this startling bit of history:
While promoting his book The Art of the Deal in the United Kingdom in 1988, Trump discussed U.S.-Iran relations following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. Mulling hypothetical military actions, Trump told The Guardian at the time, “They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.”
Seems he has become somewhat more cautious since then. But he was already thinking about the Strait and Kharg Island.
Based on any earlier history, this operation has been incredibly successful. It is hard to see how it will play out, but our thinkers I am sure are constantly monitoring details and deveoping plans.
It will succeed. It will rid the world of Twelver lunatics and result in a wonderful period of peace in that part of the world.
Richard Illyes:
I deeply hope that will come to pass.
Based on the information we have on the amount of enriched uranium that the Islamic regime has in its possession, we have two options– the regime agreeing to independent removal of all uranium from the country or the collapse of the regime with a new government allowing the removal of the uranium.
With or without us, I don’t think Israel will stop their campaign until the regime is gone.
The regime still projects power, and will until suddenly they don’t. Along with the bombing of Kharg Island and disruption of Iran’s ability to continue exporting oil, another major economic event took place.
Recent reports indicate that Israel, in coordination with the US, conducted a missile strike three days ago, that targeted and destroyed the data center of Iran’s state-run Bank Sepah in Tehran. Bank Sepah is responsible for processing salary payments to Iran’s military personnel and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The strike disrupted the bank’s systems, probably preventing it from issuing payments, and given that it hit a data center, it likely involved the destruction or severe compromise of data stored there.
The Islamic Republic could be closer to collapse or coup– possibly weeks or a month.
Here’s Grok’s based on available data (which is based on a lot of speculation/estimates):
None of this will happen until the US/Israel gives the green light, which won’t happen until the Strait of Hormuz is secured, IMO. The fastest way for that to happen is other navies to commit to escorting tankers through the Arabian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. The continued threat of drones– both air and sea will likely continue. Ukraine proved the viability of sea drones to attack ships and the nature of drones, which can be fired from any location makes them hard to eradicate completely. Naval ships could render them ineffective.
First, we take Kharg Island,
Then they take Tehran!
Après Leonard Cohen.
At some point, if not already, some general or colonel is going to decide that backing the current regime is a losing proposition. If a group of like minded ones get together, they could pull off a coup.
Most of the past week has seen Iranians without internet service. That seems to have changed recently.
From Israel, here’s a full hour recap by TBN Israel posted 2 or 3 hours ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_QnNefnE9E
NOTE — nearly 1.7 million subscribers! Vox popoli winner?
Max Afterburner on YT today has a new one featuring the military hits on Kharg Island.
As indicated here, today, questions about where the Marines stationed in Tokyo are headed? To the Straits? Kharg Island? Or the vicinity of Ishvahan (sp?), believed to be the locus of IRGC forces who are guarding the 60% enriched uranium stockpile.
David Hookstead, a YouTuber with 377K subscribers like me, has a fresh 16 minute update, mostly with video from X.com or online elsewhere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OONYt7Nyqj8
Why take Kharg, shut the door at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
I would like to know how many civilian casualties have occurred on the ground in Iran. I’ve heard nothing about this yet, but I’m assuming the number is very low.
Likewise, on Iranian military casualties.
I wonder how much is known by the US / Israelis about the current disposition of the enriched nuclear material, i.e. an inventory including locations. Seizing this would be a huge win.
Clearly the Starlink efforts to provide Iranian citizens with link capabilities has been bearing fruit, if Iranians are calling in the location of the Basij checkpoints so they can be obliterated by loitering drones. The Basij is a voluntary Shia militia force, acting as morality police at checkpoints. These strikes should go a long way to taking the starch out of the regime, driving the Basij underground and making them vulnerable on an individual basis to reprisals. Next should come the airdropped radios so people can hear broadcasts that are outside of state control.
Really it would be good to see the people being empowered with some confidence they won’t be crushed. I see the Venezuelan oil sales program has had some early success returning oil revenue to the government, with strings. I could see something similar here, and maybe the Kharg island strikes are the first steps.
Aggie, radios would be good, but guns, grenades, and rocket grenades would be better. Can’t fight guns with radios. I hope we are actively getting arms to the population.
Sennacherib:
Hormuz, your “mouth of the Persian Gulf”, has been mined, and the mines do not have the ability to tell “good” hull from “bad” hull.
Wars by their nature take unexpected twists and turns, and the mullahs do not fear death. Irainans are being financially strangled, with the embargos causing supply shortages and 1 million % inflation, but we see what the IRGC and Basij will do to their own countrymen. Don’t look to an uprising anytime soon.
Bushehr, would seem the easiest access point, the site of the only engagement the Brits had in their war with Iran in 1856, they landed their marines there, everything else was naval bombardment,
I’m still unclear about some of this, because there are US ships at each end of the straits, I do remember that, (the News leaves out a lot of data, they had reported earlier,
it seems most of the ships that have been targeted havebeen with drones and the remaining misssiles, the latter was out problem in the first Gulf war,
CICERO.
I was thinking of Iwo in WWII. True the Islamists believe death in defense of their faith is a promotion, but we defeated the Japanese.
I hear this all the time, the country as a whole has no stomach for a protracted war, shades of Nam. I disagree.
Trump’s message…and Hamas’s…
“Hamas’s secret letter to Mojtaba Khamenei;
“Alongside an official and ceremonial letter, Hamas sent a secret letter to the new Supreme Leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, which included a declaration of militant intentions.”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/423990
Sennacherib asks why take Kharg? To protect world supplies of exported oil — and essential income to rebuild with for the new regime.
Iran is the fourth largest exporter of oil in the world and over 80% of it goes to China.
Whoever controls Kharg Island controls Iran’s sole source of income and has China’s attention.
Wretchard The Cat on X has many notes about what’s happening. Including, recently, that Trump’s words are a bit like an NBA star making fakes & feints so as to drive to the goal. He doesn’t know what will happen.
I don’t either, but Trump’s & Hegseth’s prior successes, plus the real news of what has actually happened makes me pretty confident that Trump’s going to achieve many of his goals. Tho I wish I knew his goal was regime change & that he achieve that. I don’t know that.
I do know that the Iran regime not knowing what Trump really wants means their defense will be minimized, so the minimum number of Americans will be killed. Far more than 0, far less than 10,000 (a third of last year’s auto deaths). I guess & hope less than 1000 for regime change, with Iranians becoming the boots on the ground needed for regime change.
All US deaths are kind of equal, but don’t all get the same level of publicity.
It wouldn’t surprise me too much if Marines taking over Kharg are called “temporary” so they don’t count, as boots in Iran. (60%) Nor that it’s not US Marines, but are other allies who take over. Nor be surprised if no boots at all (40%)
long post, that was willowed
Azerbaijan was where the oil was discovered sometime at the turn of the 20th century, Koba Stalin used to do hold up in that neck of the woods, they briefly declared independence after the Revolution, but Lenin, in a cynical twist, used jihad to take it over, Zinoviev explains to Reed, (Kosinki to Beatty) the stratagem,
Reed still dies on the way to Baku, and Louise Brooks marries William Bullitt, the future envoy to the Soviet Union turned cold warrior,
several generations of apparatchiks rule the roost, the last being Heydar Aliev, who rose to the rank of the Central Committee eventually President, the end of the cold war, sparked the fraticidal conflict with Armenia, and they clashed on a number of occassions, Azerbaijan enlisted fighters like Basayev to fight their battles, Armenia aligned with Iran, in the peculiar arithmetic of the region, as did a host of other figures who would become infamous in the following decade,
*it was a footnote in the opening to crimson tide, where a thinly disguised Zhirinovsky reacts to Western sanctions over strikes in Rutul and Belagani
too small cities there,
the Alievs still became a hereditary kleptocracy, run in the same way as most of the regimes in Central Asia, perhaps less so, various foreign policy mandarins of both left and right politics, sought commercial ontacts in Baku, there was a pipeline that ran across Turkey its Western neighbor to the Caspian
it is like their southern neighbor a predominately Shia state, with a decidedly secular orientation, it has sought tacit alliance with Israel despite this,
TJ,
I say if we have enough oil just shut the gulf down. If it is a necessity let the world accomplish it. As far as rebuilding, the ad ministration has not said lf it’s regime change or regime behavior change. Kharg Island facilities are as important to the current regime as it would be to a new pro-Irani regime.
— Richard Illyes
There’s a decent chance it will, for certain values of and depending on the definition of ‘succeed’.
— Richard Illyes
Highly improbable. It may well weaken them enormously, but nobody that I know of has ever completely wiped out a religious or ideological movement by force alone, unless it’s incredibly tiny.
— Richard Illyes
This sort of talk is just the kind of thing that breeds cynicism when it doesn’t work out, and it never works out.
Even if we crush the mullahs entirely, and even if a somewhat sane and civilized state or collection of states takes their place, the Middle East will remain a rumbling powderkeg. The three major Abrahamic faiths collide head on there, and countless ethnic and cultural fault lines intersect there as well. Its geographical location and natural resources make it strategically critical, geopolitically.
It’s a powderkeg and it’s going to continue to be a powderkeg whatever the outcome of the Iran War.
I’ve heard a lot of people say they just want OUT of the middle east mess, but that’s irrelevant. All roads lead back to the Middle East, like it or not.
It goes without saying that Israel’s refusal to roll over and die is the REAL (and ONLY) obstacle to global “peace in our time”…as so many “pursuers of peace” are eager to tell us…and it is precisely THIS that “compels” reasonable, caring, compassionate and fair-minded people to conclude that the Dear Mullahs and their various virtuous proxies MUST be supported to the hilt in their spiritual, peace-seeking—and, not least, aesthetic—goals
OTOH, might one wonder about possible outcomes should some wunderkind hit on a solution to FUSION?
(Either that or Elon Musk figuring out a way to transport energy from orbital solar panel farms to dear old planet earth…)
Talking about “fusion”, here’s one hideous, unholy mess…roiling violently in the land of liberté, egalité, fraternité…
(…but precious little honêteté…).
“A Murder Brings the Left One Step Closer to Power in France;
“The killing of the far-right activist Quentin Deranque, 23, by six antifa in the city of Lyon is about to alter France’s political crisis for the worse”—
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/deranque-murder-brings-french-left-closer-power
H/T Powerline blog.
The French appear to be totally and completely F’ed, between the actual neo-Nazis and the Pali-loving murderous faschists (Antifa oui!). Or at least in Lyon.