Welcome to Hormuz!

   Trump keeps talking about "Kharg island" (جزیره خارگ in Arabic script) but unfortunately the forsaken 20 km2 rock deep inside the Persian Gulf, close to Kuwait should be the very last of his concerns. The Island is little more than a deep sea terminal where oil tankers come to load crude oil, being much easier to approach than the mainland terminals nearby. The oil is transported by pipeline to the island which is therefore of no strategic importance whatsoever. 

   What he should really obsess about is the much larger "Qeshm Island" (جزيرة قشم) which is located right in the middle of the Hormuz strait and almost impossible to take over. But to understand the challenge, words are not enough.

    Looking at the map, you will notice that the strait of Hormuz is exceptionally shallow which is the reason why it is said to be "narrow". In reality, it is quite large since it takes about 2 hours to cross from Khasab in Oman to Bandar-Abbas in Iran. A treacherous ride that hundreds of fast boats do daily to transport contraband between the two countries. But this is only part of the story.   

      Here above is what the coast looks like. Beautiful, most certainly but also deadly. This is not Iwo-jima, the Japanese island with its black volcanic sand beaches where the Americans lost 5,000 men. More like the cliffs of Omaha Beach in Normandy where the soldiers struggled on D-Day. But although what was a problem in 1944, which should easily be solved in 2026 with helicopters, what's behind these cliffs is the real obstacle. 

 

   To say that the landscape of Qeshm Island is forbidding is again an understatement. Almost completely devoid of vegetation, or roads, this is definitively not Normandy which was already so difficult to move around. 

   And then there is the absolute killer: In a couple of months, the temperature will be well above 50C (or about 125F). This is so hot that your head becomes dizzy after a few minutes outside. So think about soldiers with their backpacks and armament. This is very close to mission impossible. 

   But there is worse still. Behind these hills, there are real mountains from which the Strait of Hormuz can be controlled 270 degrees and from above.  

   All this means that practically, whatever the Americans do in the South of Iran, controlling the Strait of Hormuz will not happen in weeks or even months.  

   The Iranians have said that this war is existential for them. They will not surrender or give up easily. The Americans may have an overwhelming force but Iran with its extremely rugged terrain is nothing like the flat desert of Iraq. 

   And then there are the deeper obstacles which are the reason why the war should never have happened to start with: Iran, unlike all the Arab countries of the Middle East is not an artificial country created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War but a deeply rooted civilization occupying their land, which is the size of Western Europe, for over 3,000 years.

   It is also the heart of the Shia faith which has been opposed to the rest of the Sunni Muslims for over 1,000 years. 

   To open this old festering wound at this stage was absolute madness. The Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are saying that now that the US started this war, it must be completed with the defeat of their ancestral enemy. They have a point. But what is more likely to happen, unfortunately for them, is a complete remodeling of the artificial borders of their rootless kingdoms and their wealth slowly, or maybe not so slowly, evaporating and reverting to its sandy (and oily) origin.