Omar Boo retweetet
Trump’s extension of his ultimatum to Iran until 6 April is essentially meaningless.
The ultimatum applies only to the US vow to destroy Iran’s power infrastructure, and not to any other aspect of US-Israeli aggression against the country.
Given Iran’s credible threats of a devastating response to any such attacks, and the impact this could have on the essential infrastructure of multiple Arab states closely aligned with the US, it is an open question whether the US will follow through if the ultimatum expires without an Iranian response that meets Washington's conditions. The US could proceed with widespread attacks to shut down Iran’s electrical grid, but is unlikely to do so.
What does appear increasingly probable, and at this point all but certain, is a US initiative to seize territory in the Persian Gulf.
Kharg island is often identified as the location for what even the Associated Press will, after intensive debate and reflection, characterize as an invasion. While this is where Iran’s main oil export facilities are located, it is unlikely to be the first target.
A more obvious objective would be one or more of the Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, and Abu Musa islands. Sovereignty over these Persian Gulf islands has been contested between the United Arab Emirates and Iran since the latter took control of them in 1971 under the former Pahlavi regime. Just as importantly, the UAE’s sovereign claims are supported by every other member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as the Arab League.
By focusing on the contested islands rather than Kharg, the US could claim to be restoring Arab sovereignty rather than invading Iran, while simultaneously achieving its goal of seizing territory from Iran. Washington would also be hoping to show that this war, which it launched without consulting the GCC states who have borne the brunt of Iranian retaliation, is serving Arab and not only Israeli interests.
For the US, the big prize would be direct Emirati participation in such an attack. Arab states have been making increasingly angry statements in response to continuous Iranian attacks on their territory, and have on more than one occasion indicated that their patience is wearing thin. Military participation in the US-Israeli war would be a dramatic development, with potentially enormous consequences, but the UAE is the state most likely to do so. Particularly if it concerns territory claimed by Abu Dhabi, and even more so if it concludes it is going to bear the brunt of an Iranian response even if it doesn’t participate.
The above is of course pure speculation. But US ground forces clearly are preparing to land somewhere in the Persian Gulf, and this could well be directly or also on the Iranian coast. The frenetic diplomacy of the past several days is in this respect merely a sideshow.
Needless to say, Israel has been insisting on the deployment of US (never Israeli) ground forces, claiming that doing so will finally get the job done. Israel, its minions in Washington, and the war faction in the Trump administration appear to be once again successfully persuading the hopelessly vacuous, ignorant, and delusional US president that the shock value of territorial losses will cause the Iranian government to either capitulate or collapse.
Even they don’t believe it. Rather, they are deliberately setting the stage for further escalation on a massive scale, confident that if they can land just a few thousand US troops on Iranian territory, the dynamics will be firmly in place for exponentially more to follow.
As far as they are concerned, the destruction of every state and society astride the Persian Gulf is a small price to pay for the greater glory of Israel and the United States. Yet hubristic fever dreams have a way of being overtaken by reality.
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