President Donald Trump is weighing a ground invasion to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export hub in the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. military has positioned thousands of Marines in the region and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., is publicly calling for the assault.
Kharg Island sits roughly 15 miles off Iran’s coast and handles up to 90 percent of the country’s crude oil exports. U.S. Central Command already struck more than 90 military targets on the island on March 13 in what President Trump called “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East.”
Trump said his forces “totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island” but deliberately spared the island’s oil infrastructure.
“For reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, but said that could change if Iran continued blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
Three Marine units have been deployed to the Middle East. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, carrying 2,200 Marines aboard the USS Tripoli, departed Okinawa on March 13. The USS Boxer and its embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit were deployed ahead of schedule from the West Coast.
The push for Kharg Island is tied directly to Iran’s closure of the strait, a critical shipping lane that carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil.
Trump “wants Hormuz open,” a source told Axios. “If he has to take Kharg Island to make it happen, that’s going to happen. If he decides to have a coastal invasion, that’s going to happen.”
Trump publicly said Thursday he was “not putting troops anywhere,” before adding: “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”
Graham, one of the war’s most prominent Senate supporters, made the case for the beach assault on Fox News Sunday, and rejected the media’s pessimism about the U.S. military.
“I’m sort of tired of all this armchair quarterbacking. This has been an amazing military operation. God bless the fallen,” Graham told Fox News. “I trust the Marines, not that guy. I trust DOD. We’ve got two marine expeditionary area units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima, we can do this. The Marines? My money is always on the Marines.”
Graham said he has urged Trump to act.
“Take Kharg Island, where they have all of the resources they have to produce oil.”
“I don’t know if you take the island or you blockade the island, but I know this: The day we control that island, this regime, this terrorist regime, has been weakened and it will die on a vine,” Graham said.
The Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 was a major U.S. victory, but nearly 7,000 U.S. Marines were killed and more than 19,000 wounded over 36 days of fierce fighting. Thirteen U.S. service members have died so far in the current war with Iran, with approximately 200 wounded.