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I can't understand what the point is of seizing Kharg island. The US could just bomb it to leave it unusable for as long as they want? Or just steal the tankers at sea? It's not like it would be hard to blow up some oil storage terminals.
Landing troops there would just make them a juicy target and difficult to resupply. Iran can launch all kinds of things from inland at them.
Controlling the island gives you leverage in negotiations. You want your oil refineries back? Then play ball. Or in the best case scenario you can hand it over to a new friendly regime.
And yeah, Iran can launch all kinds of things, if they’re fine up blowing up their own refineries in the process.
I really don't see the benefit here, karg is just their oil export terminal. All of kargs oil has to go through the strait, which iran has closed anyway. They've already determined they can last without oil exports from karg. Karg is useless without the ability to export oil from there and iran already isn't. This logic has real "we're taking kursk as a bargining chip in negotiations" energy. How did that work out?
The benefit is leverage in peace negotiations, and if there is peace the strait won’t be closed anymore. The Karg island facilities are extremely valuable to Iran in peacetime, which makes them worth taking in times of war.
Alternatively, the conflict never really ends and it's gitmo east.
Yeah, I think Trump likes the idea of territorial expansion. Is it feasible to build a naval base there? And if so, does that reduce the need of the United States to locate facilities in places like Bahrain?
For a while during the Ukraine conflict, Ukraine was still getting royalties on Russian pipelines running through Ukrainian territory.
Imagine a goof-ass future where the United States occupies Iran's export terminals and charges Iran royalties to export oil, while the Gulf states pay bribes to Iran to keep Hormuz open. Everyone hates each other but can't afford a war anymore. Trump gets a nobel peace prize, but whines that it should be called the Donald Strait.
Nice . . I know you're kidding around, but I think there's like a 5% chance that Trump will try to grab that island and name it after himself.
I'm not sure if I'm kidding around. It seems more likely than any of what appear to be the plans for the end of the war by the participants involved, which are some mix of "and then the people rise up" and "and then the Zionist conspiracy collapses" with a dash of ”Jesus Christ returns (and is on my side)."
I'm starting to think this ends with oil royalties being spread around to make it look like everybody got something.
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