Iran has been setting traps and moving additional military personnel and air defenses to Kharg Island in recent weeks, in preparation for a possible US operation to take control of the island, according to several people familiar with US intelligence reports on the matter.
The Trump administration is considering using U.S. military forces to seize the small island in the northeastern Persian Gulf — an economic lifeline for Iran that handles about 90% of the country’s crude oil exports — as leverage over the Iranians to force them to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, CNN reported.
But U.S. officials and military experts say there would be significant risks in such a ground operation, including high U.S. casualties. The island has tiered defenses, and the Iranians have moved additional shoulder-fired surface-to-air guided missile systems there in recent weeks, known as MANPADS, the sources said.
Iran has also been laying traps, including antipersonnel and antiarmor mines, around the island, the sources said, including on the coastline where U.S. forces could possibly execute an amphibious landing if President Donald Trump went ahead with a land operation.
Some allies of the president have raised questions about whether there is a need to attempt such an operation, given that successfully taking the island would not, on its own, solve problems related to the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s suffocating control over the global energy market, the source added.
US Central Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iranian actions in Kharg.
US military forces had already attacked Kharg with bombing raids on March 13, and Central Command said 90 targets had been hit, including “naval mine storage depots, missile storage bunkers and multiple other military sites.” Trump announced the attack by saying that US forces had avoided hitting the island’s oil infrastructure “out of decency.”
An Israeli source said there is concern that taking control of Kharg would lead to Iranian drone attacks and shoulder-fired missiles, killing US forces. “The hope is that they won’t take that risk and instead shoot at the oil fields, but there’s no way to know,” this source said.
“I would be very concerned about this,” said retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander who now serves as a CNN military analyst. “The Iranians are cunning and ruthless. They will do everything they can to inflict maximum casualties on American forces both on ships at sea, and especially once land forces are anywhere on their sovereign territory.”
The speaker of Iran’s parliament on Wednesday warned the country’s “enemies” against attempting to occupy any Iranian island.
“According to some information, the enemies of Iran, with the support of one of the countries in the region, are preparing to occupy one of the Iranian islands,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf published in
On Wednesday, Ghalibaf said: “We closely monitor all US movements in the region, especially force deployments.”
Kharg Island is about a third the size of Manhattan, meaning the US would need to deploy a robust landing force to take the island if it moved forward with such an operation, a person familiar with US military planning told CNN. It is located at the northernmost tip of the Persian Gulf, far from the Strait of Hormuz, but close to Iranian oil facilities.
Two Marine Expeditionary Units, specializing in rapid response amphibious landings, raids and assault missions from Navy amphibious ships, have recently deployed to the Middle East. Those units include several thousand Marines along with amphibious warships, aviation assets and landing craft. Such units are most likely to be involved in an operation to take Kharg, sources said. About 1,000 U.S. service members from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division also expect to deploy to the region in the coming days.
Another person familiar with U.S. military planning said Central Command maintains near-constant and persistent aerial surveillance of the island, so the military has been able to see both physical and environmental changes in areas that appear to have been planted with traps.
US military attacks on the island degraded some of its air and sea defenses, including HAWK surface-to-air missiles and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns, according to Stavridis.
But U.S. forces would remain vulnerable to Iranian attacks with ballistic missiles and drones given the island’s proximity to the Iranian coast, and Trump officials are still evaluating whether a ground mission is worth the risk, according to a source familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations on the matter.
The United States maintains plans to quickly destroy sensitive information and infrastructure if US military facilities and posts abroad are overwhelmed, a source familiar told CNN. It stands to reason, the source said, that Iran could have similar plans.
Gulf allies are also privately urging the Trump administration not to prolong the war by putting troops on the ground to occupy Kharg Island or remove Iran’s highly enriched uranium at a nuclear facility that was previously bombed by US aircraft, a senior Gulf official said. The concern is that occupying Kharg Island with US military forces would result in several casualties, likely triggering Iranian retaliation against Gulf countries’ infrastructure and prolonging the conflict, the senior Gulf official said.
Instead, Gulf nations are pressing U.S. officials on the need to dismantle Iran’s ballistic missile program before the conflict ends, to which U.S. officials agree. In recent days, the Pentagon has informed Gulf countries that a large portion of Iran’s ballistic and cruise missile capabilities have been destroyed and that the United States is close to completing its target list, without specifying a timeline, the official said.
Stavridis indicated that one possible way to pressure the Iranians is to consider a maritime blockade off the coast of Kharg, making it impossible to export the oil. “This could be done without actually putting soldiers on the ground,” he said.
CNN’s Haley Britzky contributed to this report
