FLASH: A TRUMP HIGH RISK GAMBIT: The 82nd Airborne Is About To Seize An Iranian Chokepoint, Kharg Island And Adjacent Oil Infrastructure (moving 2.7 million barrels per day), Within A Matter of Days
Somewhere in Iran, there are over 600 anti-ship missiles hidden away. These are not ancient silkworm missiles like I had to deal with in Desert Storm. These are Iranian and Chinese-built versions of the French Exocet anti-ship missile. They fly very low and very fast and can defeat radar systems. Our anti-ship Gatling guns can be overwhelmed if they fire in large bunches. I want you to imagine for one minute that a whole group of amphibious ships is landing Marines on the island, and then suddenly 50 or more missiles start coming in, along with swarms of drones. It would be a bloodbath. The island is only 25 km from the Iranian mainland, with mountains looking down onto it.
It’s always possible to seize Kharg Island if you want to lose men and ships.
Malcolm Nance, Substack
And Russia is helping its ally:
Russia’s secret help to Iran that could enrage Trump
‘Amount of firepower over Iran is about to surge dramatically,’ says Hegseth
Russia is reportedly supplying Iran with intelligence on US military assets in the Middle East, a development that could impact relations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
According to The Washington Post, Moscow has been providing Iran with locations of US warships and aircraft since the conflict began last Saturday.
The conflict has escalated, with joint US-Israeli strikes killing at least 1,200 people in Iran, and fighting spreading to areas including Azerbaijan and Sri Lanka.
Russia has condemned the conflict as an ‘unprovoked act of armed aggression’ by the US and Israel, despite its own invasion of Ukraine, and warned of Iran potentially acquiring a nuclear bomb.
Donald Trump stated there would be ‘no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender,’ while the US Secretary of Defence indicated a dramatic surge in firepower over Iran.
This kind of miscalculation happens in war, btw. The thing that does not is that while the USA was begging for aid from Ukraine, it was providing protection and a windfall of support for the power trying to destroy Ukraine—Russia. So we have a situation that the Ukrainians are helping the USA and the USA is helping/protecting Russia. This must be the lead story for the week.
And he spots the rot in the present US military:
Now this was not just a sign of Trump’s pathological need to criticize Zelensky and Biden whenever he can, it was also a desperate attempt to deflect the blame for his own incompetence. Because as this was being said, the war he unleashed, by cboice, against Iran was already showing how elements of “rot” had set in to the US military and diplomatic services
For those who missed it, I had a piece come out on Thursday in the Atlantic about this phenomenon and sent out a follow up Substack on Friday. Both pieces pointed out that the Trump administration seemed to have missed preparing for low cost UAV interception, overlooking probably the most important technological development in the Russo-Ukraine war over the last four years. It was one of the reasons I used the word “rot” to describe what we are seeing. Here is a quick summary from the Friday piece.
The most incompetent military/industrial preparations for war In US history. Guess what? Cheap drones are a thing and you need to shoot them down efficiently. You would have had to be living under a rock for the last four years not to know this, but apparently the Trump administration and US Department of Defense had not learned the lesson. The US started burning through expensive anti-air armaments at a pace that shocked them when this campaign started. It was only afterwards that Trump called in industry leaders for a panic stricken meeting demanding more construction
7th Mar 2026
And as Bessent, Kushner and foreign friends acquires US gaming company Electronic Arts for 55 billion dollars, guess what? :
Tapper blasts Trump administration for depicting Iran conflict ‘like a game’
Story by Sophie Brams
CNN anchor Jake Tapper blasted the Trump administration on Friday for depicting the ongoing conflict in Iran “like a game” after the White House released clips on social media mixing footage of what appeared to be U.S. military strikes with clips from video games and Hollywood productions.
“Well, the last day or so, the White House has been in at least one way treating going to war like a game, frivolously releasing what we will charitably call hype videos about their war,” Tapper said on “The Lead.”
Iran’s Kharg Island, which hosts the country’s main crude export terminal and is responsible for the overwhelming majority of its oil shipments to the world, about 25 kilometres south of the mainland in the north of the Gulf, on February 22, 2026. Photo: 2026 Planet Labs PBC / AFP / LehtikuvaInternational news
United States forces struck military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island as the illegal war of aggression of the United States and Israel against Iran entered its third week. Retaliations of Iran on US assets have resulted in attacks spreading across the Gulf, with a drone strike also hitting a major oil complex in the United Arab Emirates today.
The Kharg island handles about 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports and stands at the centre of the country’s oil trade. The US attack targeted military facilities on the island while leaving oil terminals intact, according to American officials.
President Donald Trump said the operation destroyed Iranian military infrastructure on the island.
“United States forces have totally obliterated the military targets on Kharg Island,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “For reasons of decency, I chose not to wipe out the oil infrastructure.”
He added that the decision would change if Iran interferes with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which about one fifth of global oil supply moves.
US Central Command later confirmed the scale of the strike. “US forces successfully struck more than 90 Iranian military targets on Kharg Island while preserving the oil infrastructure,” the command said in a statement.
Targets included naval mine storage areas, missile bunkers, and other military installations near the export terminal.
Iranian officials acknowledged explosions on the island yet said the oil facilities remain intact. Ehsan Jahanian, political deputy to the governor of Bushehr province, told the Tasnim news agency that crude shipments continued.
“The process of exporting oil from the Kharg oil terminal is fully under way, and the activities of companies based on the island are continuing without interruption,” he said.
Kharg Island lies about 30 kilometres off the Iranian coast in the northern Gulf. Tankers load crude there before sailing through the Strait of Hormuz toward Asian markets. Analysts say any damage to the terminal would threaten global energy supply.
Iran’s armed forces issued warnings after the strike. Colonel Ebrahim Zulfiqari from the Khatam headquarters said Tehran reserves the right to hit American assets in Gulf states.
“We declare to the leaders of the Emirates that the Islamic Republic considers it its legitimate right to strike the source of American enemy missile launches at ports, docks, and hideouts of US military personnel,” the statement said, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
The warning came as smoke rose from an oil facility in the Emirati port of Fujairah after a drone interception triggered a fire.
Authorities in the emirate said air defences stopped the drone, and falling debris caused the blaze. The government media office reported no injuries while civil defence crews worked to control the flames.
Industry sources told Reuters that some oil loading operations at the port were suspended after the incident.
Fujairah stands as one of the largest oil storage centres in the Middle East and serves as a key refuelling hub for ships. The port sits on the Gulf of Oman outside the Strait of Hormuz, which allows tankers to bypass the narrow channel during regional crises.
Images from the area showed black smoke rising above rows of storage tanks and industrial buildings near the shoreline.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps described American facilities in the UAE as legitimate targets after the Kharg strike. A statement carried by Iranian media warned residents to stay away from ports and military areas linked to the United States.
Across the region, the conflict widened through a chain of strikes and counterstrikes.
A missile struck a helipad inside the United States embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraqi officials told the Associated Press. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Israel also continued air operations linked to the war. Defence Minister Israel Katz said the campaign had reached a turning point.
“The conflict with Iran is entering a decisive phase,” Katz said during a meeting with military officials, according to the Times of Israel.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
borderslynn 
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