doha, qatar —
In a message marking the 30th anniversary of the start of the Iran war, a senior Iranian official detailed how many ordinary people in the tense Gulf and beyond privately fear Washington’s next move.
A statement from Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said: “The enemy is publicly signaling negotiations while secretly planning a ground attack.”
He might be right.
While Washington still insists it is making progress in negotiations with Iran, it has sent thousands of troops to the region, some of which are now beginning to assemble, including 3,500 who arrived from Asia this weekend.
Much speculation has focused on the possibility of US forces seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. Capturing it would cut off a vital economic lifeline for the Islamic Republic, with the Revolutionary Guards hoping to drain vital funds from oil exports.
Plans have not been made public, but U.S. forces may be ordered to seize coastal positions in an effort to reopen the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is a strategic energy hub that Iran has effectively blockaded since the start of the US and Israeli offensive in late February, causing a severe oil and gas supply shock that has rippled through global markets.
There is also talk of the US military raiding nuclear facilities deep within Iran to recover worrisome nuclear material amid growing concerns that an angry and desperate Iranian regime could use the material to build nuclear weapons.
But as has been widely discussed, while the possibility of a ground operation has been telegraphed by Washington for weeks, putting U.S. boots on the ground would carry enormous risks, especially given the slow assembling of clearly unprepared U.S. forces scattered around the world.
In his message, Ghalibaf warned that Iranian forces were already “waiting for American soldiers to enter the ground.” Without the element of surprise, U.S. ground operations can quickly turn into a disaster, even with vastly superior firepower.
And there are significant risks to nearby communities. The energy-rich Gulf Arab states, already suffering billions of dollars in losses and mass exodus as a direct result of this Iran war, are rightly concerned about what will happen next.
Tehran has already fired punitive missiles and drones at its Persian Gulf neighbors (all of which are home to U.S. military facilities), and has vowed to step up attacks and, in Ghalibaf’s words, “punish our regional partners forever” if the war in Iran escalates.
It is well understood in the region that this could mean widespread targeting of sensitive and highly vulnerable energy facilities, which Iran has already threatened, are vital to regional and global economies, and difficult to repair and rebuild quickly.
For example, in mid-March, two Iranian ballistic missiles struck the world’s largest gas production facility, Ras Laffan, in Qatar, causing limited damage but shocking international energy markets. Further such strikes across the region are likely to cause severe and long-term economic distress.
Desalination plants, on which the arid Gulf Arab states rely almost entirely for their freshwater supplies, could also join the firing line, although Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps denies such an inhumane war plan, at least for now.
“The lying, terrorist, child-killing president of the United States has claimed that the Revolutionary Guards are targeting desalination plants in the region and intending to bring hardship to the people of the region,” he said in a Telegram post last week.
“The Revolutionary Guards have never done anything like that,” the Revolutionary Guards statement ominously added.
There is no doubt that unless some compromise is found in negotiations, the Iran war could get much worse before it gets better.
But putting aside the question of whether negotiations between the United States and Iran are actually taking place (which Iran denies), the positions of both sides in the current negotiations appear to be very different.
Washington’s 15-point plan, more like an unconditional surrender than a blueprint for dialogue, calls for a halt to Iran’s nuclear activities and support for regional proxies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as well as strict limits on Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, demands that have long been unacceptable to the Islamic republic.
“The United States has made its aspirations clear with a list of 15 points and is pursuing what it could not achieve in war,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf said in a recent message, adding that Iran would not accept “humiliation.”
But Iran’s own five-point plan to end the war appears equally unrealistic, calling for it to pay war reparations to Iran, seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, and remove U.S. military bases in the region, among other things.
Given the growing interest on both sides to end the devastating war, it is possible that some sort of agreement can be reached. However, there is still no sign of compromise and things are only going to escalate.
Iran has been hit hard by this war. As U.S. and Israeli attacks weakened, its leadership failed and its military strength declined, albeit at a high cost in lives lost to beleaguered civilians.
But the Islamic Republic has proven resilient and adept at complicating what the Trump administration cast as a simple military campaign to decapitate Iran’s leadership and bring down its regime.
Rather, Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and the threat it poses to the regional and global economies has left Iran unable to control itself.
Further complicating matters is the recent intervention by Iran’s Houthis in Yemen, firing missiles at Israel and potentially blocking a narrow strategic chokepoint in the Red Sea, another vital shipping lane. All of this makes Washington’s hopes of quickly winning the war of its choice, already in its second month, seem remote at best.
