Stalin
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The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), in an assessment published on Friday, compared such an operation to the Gallipoli campaign of 1915—the catastrophic Allied attempt to force open the Dardanelles by landing British, French, Australian and colonial troops on Ottoman soil. At Gallipoli, the navy could not clear the strait, and the army was sent to do what the navy could not. The result was eight months of slaughter, a quarter of a million casualties on both sides, and a complete Allied withdrawal with nothing achieved but mass death. The defenders, fighting on their own ground, proved impossible to dislodge.
The institute’s assessment of an equivalent operation at Hormuz is devastating. It would be “Gallipoli times ten, with the difference that the Iranians could always pull back to interior lines of defence.” The Iranian coastline commanding the strait stretches more than 150 kilometers—three times the length of the Gallipoli peninsula—backed by mountains that offer defensive positions in depth. “There is no defensible line that US forces could ever secure,” the ASPI wrote.
Iran has spent 40 years preparing for this fight. The IRGC has fortified the coastline with anti-ship missile batteries, drone launch sites, mine-laying facilities, and positions for the hundreds of fast attack boats that form the backbone of its coastal defense. It has deployed 20,000 naval troops in the strait region, including 5,000 marines. It has conducted drills specifically rehearsing the repulsion of an amphibious landing. Bandar Abbas—the hub of Iranian naval operations, a city of half a million people—sits directly on the strait.
An American amphibious assault on this coastline would face a combination of mines beneath, boat attacks from the water, and anti-ship missiles and drones from the shore. The soldiers who survived the landing would then face an indefinite ground war—IEDs, guerrilla raids, drone strikes, artillery from positions deeper inland—against forces that know every ridge, every road and every tunnel, and that can be reinforced from a nation of 90 million people.
To hold this coastline would require tens, or potentially hundreds of thousands of troops. The casualties—in the initial assault, the ongoing occupation, and the inevitable expansion of the operation as each “limited” objective proved insufficient—would be devastating. They would be measured not in the dozens that have been killed so far, but in the hundreds, the thousands—on a scale that the American population has not witnessed since Vietnam.
And these would be only the American casualties. The Iranian death toll, which is already in the thousands from the air campaign, including at least 175 children incinerated in a single strike on an elementary school in Minab, would multiply enormously. Hegseth has told us what to expect. “No mercy” and “no quarter.” “Death and destruction from the sky, all day long.”
comrade stalin
moscow
The institute’s assessment of an equivalent operation at Hormuz is devastating. It would be “Gallipoli times ten, with the difference that the Iranians could always pull back to interior lines of defence.” The Iranian coastline commanding the strait stretches more than 150 kilometers—three times the length of the Gallipoli peninsula—backed by mountains that offer defensive positions in depth. “There is no defensible line that US forces could ever secure,” the ASPI wrote.
Iran has spent 40 years preparing for this fight. The IRGC has fortified the coastline with anti-ship missile batteries, drone launch sites, mine-laying facilities, and positions for the hundreds of fast attack boats that form the backbone of its coastal defense. It has deployed 20,000 naval troops in the strait region, including 5,000 marines. It has conducted drills specifically rehearsing the repulsion of an amphibious landing. Bandar Abbas—the hub of Iranian naval operations, a city of half a million people—sits directly on the strait.
An American amphibious assault on this coastline would face a combination of mines beneath, boat attacks from the water, and anti-ship missiles and drones from the shore. The soldiers who survived the landing would then face an indefinite ground war—IEDs, guerrilla raids, drone strikes, artillery from positions deeper inland—against forces that know every ridge, every road and every tunnel, and that can be reinforced from a nation of 90 million people.
To hold this coastline would require tens, or potentially hundreds of thousands of troops. The casualties—in the initial assault, the ongoing occupation, and the inevitable expansion of the operation as each “limited” objective proved insufficient—would be devastating. They would be measured not in the dozens that have been killed so far, but in the hundreds, the thousands—on a scale that the American population has not witnessed since Vietnam.
And these would be only the American casualties. The Iranian death toll, which is already in the thousands from the air campaign, including at least 175 children incinerated in a single strike on an elementary school in Minab, would multiply enormously. Hegseth has told us what to expect. “No mercy” and “no quarter.” “Death and destruction from the sky, all day long.”
Trump is planning a ground invasion of Iran
A ground invasion of the Iranian coastline would not be a limited or contained operation. It would be a protracted and gruesome bloodbath.
www.wsws.org
comrade stalin
moscow
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