Peace and Justice Post

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 17 July

The White House has held meetings this week to discuss sending ground troops to Iran, according to a report published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. President Donald Trump “is leaning toward expanding U.S. military operations in Iran after days of briefings from top aides,” the Journal wrote, citing US officials, with the options including “sending ground forces to seize Iranian islands near the Strait of Hormuz.”

A ground invasion of Iran would mark the war’s most dangerous escalation to date. Four and a half months of war, beginning February 28, have left the Iranian government in place, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium sealed underground and shipping through the strait nearly halted. Washington is turning toward ground forces because bombing has failed.

Trump convened a meeting in the White House Situation Room Tuesday evening “to discuss the potential seizure of Kharg Island and other territory along the Strait of Hormuz using U.S. troops, as well as the potential bombing of a tunnel complex at Pickaxe Mountain,” the Journal reported. The discussion “was one of multiple formal and informal conversations Trump has held in recent days” with senior officials about an escalation of the war.

Trump told Fox News Tuesday: “Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us.” In the same interview, he said it was unlikely that US forces would seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal, but would not rule it out: “If we degrade them far enough and deep enough back, I would do that.”

On June 14, Washington announced a “memorandum of understanding” to suspend direct attacks. Under the agreement, signed June 17, the United States lifted its naval blockade and paused oil sanctions in exchange for a 60-day guarantee of safe passage through the strait.

The “ceasefire” was condemned by all factions of the political establishment. Former Vice President Mike Pence, writing in the Journal on June 22, said the agreement “smacks of the kind of appeasement” Trump once rejected and urged him to “let the armed forces finish the job.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it the “art of surrender,” and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut described it as “essentially surrender to Iran.”

Trump declared the “ceasefire” over on July 8, and in a July 10 letter informed Congress that the United States had resumed “military action” against Iran—a notification the White House claims reset the 60-day clock set by the War Powers Act for the president to seek congressional approval of military operations. The bombing resumed the following night, and on Monday Trump announced the reimposition of the naval blockade, which took effect Tuesday afternoon.

Reuters reported Wednesday, citing US officials, that the strikes aimed at forcing open the Strait of Hormuz are “also targeting Iranian military capabilities the U.S. would want to destroy before executing more complex operations against Iran.” One of the officials called the strikes “shaping operations” and said: “This is helping set the stage, if needed.” Reuters wrote that another official said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “has been an advocate of escalating the military operation against Iran.”

Retired Marine General Frank McKenzie, who ran US military operations across the Middle East from 2019 to 2022, advocated a ground invasion of Kharg Island on CBS’s Face the Nation program Sunday: “That’s something we should think about doing because possession of Iranian soil would be a significant factor in future negotiations with Iran.”

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates that Iran fields some 570,000 active-duty troops and 350,000 reserves, backed by coastal missile batteries, naval mines and swarms of fast attack boats. The US military said its strikes overnight July 7-8 hit more than 80 targets, including over 60 of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ small attack boats, but Reuters reported Wednesday that Iran is still fielding missiles and drones despite heavy losses. Retired General Philip Breedlove told Fox News this week that the 2003 invasion of Iraq required more than 300,000 US troops staged in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; the American force now in the region number 50,000, but few are ground troops.

Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s foreign minister from 2005 to 2010 and a sitting member of parliament, said in a state media interview Wednesday that if US forces seize Iranian territory, Iran should storm a US base “through a combined helicopter-borne and ground assault” and take American soldiers hostage.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

The bombing has now run six consecutive nights. The wave that ended Wednesday night reached the Parchin military complex and the city of Pakdasht, near Tehran—the first strikes close to the capital in this round of the war—and hit a civilian airport in Semnan province, where Iran builds its ballistic missiles and runs its space program. A sixth wave began at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday “to further degrade Iranian military capabilities,” the US military announced; Iranian state media said a bridge between Bandar Abbas and Lar and an airport in Iranshahr, in the country’s southeast, had been struck.

On Wednesday, US missiles struck Greater Tunb Island, one of three islands commanding the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, and a barracks of the army’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, where Iranian state television said at least 13 missiles killed seven soldiers. At least 35 people have been killed and more than 300 wounded this month, according to Iran’s Health Ministry.

Iranian officials said a US strike Wednesday night hit near Shahid Baqaei Hospital, a children’s cancer center in Ahvaz, forcing the evacuation of 211 chemotherapy patients. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called it “a cowardly war crime against the most innocent of human beings—children who are bravely fighting for their lives.”

Iran struck back Thursday at air bases housing US forces in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, with the Guard citing the strike near the Ahvaz hospital as justification. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, declared Wednesday: “We are in an essential and existential war with America.” Iranian army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia warned Thursday that if Trump carries out his threats against Iranian infrastructure, “All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The US military is now enforcing the naval blockade by attacking civilian ships. Within 17 hours of its taking effect, the military said it had “redirected” two commercial ships, and on Wednesday a US aircraft fired Hellfire missiles into the smokestack of the Belma, a Curaçao-flagged tanker sailing for Kharg Island, disabling it. “The ship is no longer transiting to Iran,” the military announced.

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 15 July 2026

US President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges, as the United States reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports and bombed the country for a fourth day.

“We’re going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We’re going to hit them very hard the night after, and then next week it gets really bad for them, because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure is a war crime under international law. In April, Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” In June he posted that the United States might be “forced to militarily complete the job,” and that if that happened, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

Trump’s genocidal threats to destroy Iranian civilization, and his renewed attacks, are a testament to the deepening crisis of the war. Trump has achieved none of the war’s objectives, from overthrowing the Iranian government to controlling the Strait of Hormuz.

Underscoring the degree of the crisis, Trump backed off Tuesday from the 20 percent toll on the Strait of Hormuz that he had proclaimed only a day earlier. On Monday he had declared the United States “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” to be “reimbursed, at the rate of 20 percent on all cargo shipped” through the waterway.

On Tuesday, citing “highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership,” he announced that he would “replace the 20 percent United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States.”

The renewed blockade took effect at 4 p.m. Eastern time, one hour after US forces opened a new round of airstrikes across southern Iran.

Ship traffic through the strait, which normally carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil, has nearly stopped. The maritime data firm Kpler counted 10 transits Monday, against more than 130 a day before the war.

US forces began Tuesday’s strikes at 3 p.m., the military said. Iranian officials and news agencies reported strikes on the city of Bushehr, home of Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, on the Abadan oil refinery, Mahshahr, the islands of Qeshm and Kish, Sirik and Bandar Abbas.

Over three nights beginning Saturday, US warplanes and warships had already hit more than 300 sites, by the military’s own count.

Iran has declared the strait “closed until further notice” and is enforcing the closure with missiles.

Early Tuesday, Iranian cruise missiles struck two tankers of the Emirati state oil company, the Mombasa and the Al Bahiyah, in Omani waters, killing an Indian crew member and wounding eight others, according to the UAE’s defense ministry.

Iran struck back across the Gulf on Tuesday, firing missiles and drones at bases housing US forces. Kuwait’s army said it intercepted a ballistic missile, five cruise missiles and 33 drones, and that four of its sailors were wounded; Jordan said it shot down four missiles. Sirens sounded across Bahrain.

The bombing continued into the night. Iranian state media reported new American strikes late Tuesday along the southern coast and said a “US projectile” killed three civilians in a town in Hormozgan province.

Tehran has ruled out talks under fire. “If the US thinks its military attacks and blockade will force us to request negotiations, it’s making a mistake,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told Iranian state media Tuesday.

Iran’s parliament, meeting Monday night in its first open session in more than four months, took up a bill to require Iranian permits and fees for every ship in the strait, with American and Israeli ships barred outright, under a draft reported by Al Jazeera.

On Tuesday, about 180 lawmakers declared the deal with Washington void. “There is no longer any memorandum of understanding,” said Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman of the parliament’s national security committee.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

The Trump administration claims that it can wage war again because it had a pause. The White House maintains that the June “ceasefire” ended the earlier hostilities and that its July 10 letter to Congress restarted the 60-day clock of the War Powers Resolution.

The response in major pro-war publications demonstrates the degree of the crisis gripping the Trump administration.

“The Trump administration wasn’t bargaining for an open-ended conflict when it rolled the dice in late February and joined Israel’s military campaign to eliminate Iran’s leadership and cripple its arsenal of ballistic missiles and launchers,” the Wall Street Journal’s national security correspondent, Michael Gordon, wrote Tuesday in an analysis titled “The Battle for Hormuz.”

“This is going to be a long-term effort,” Joseph Votel, the retired Army general who commanded US forces in the Middle East from 2016 to 2019, told the Journal. In the Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius raised the prospect of a war lasting years, citing an American negotiator’s forecast that peace “will come in two weeks, or two months, or two years.”

“In retrospect, this was clearly a war based on fatally flawed assumptions,” John Hannah, a former national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and now a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said in a New York Times analysis published Tuesday, “none more damaging than the president’s apparent conviction that Iran’s revolutionary regime was a flimsy house of cards ready to collapse in a hail of American airstrikes and bellicose Truth Social posts.”

The Financial Times’ editorial board wrote Tuesday: “The quagmire underlines once again the foolishness of the war launched by Trump against the advice of many of his allies and without much understanding of his enemy. A crisis of Trump’s own making has left Tehran with newfound leverage in the strait, which Iran had never before closed in the past.”

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Sunday, 79 percent of Americans said they expect US involvement in Iran to “go on for an extended period of time.” Only 37 percent approved of the renewed strikes.

Establishing US control over the Strait of Hormuz would require a massive escalation. Holding the strait would take a ground war, military analysts told the Associated Press Tuesday. “It’s very difficult to envision any scenario where you could satisfactorily secure the Strait of Hormuz absent ground forces,” said Jason Campbell of the Middle East Institute, a former Pentagon official—an operation, he said, that would require tens of thousands of troops, months of preparation and “very high costs.”

The forces such an operation would draw on are in place. The Abraham Lincoln and George H.W. Bush carrier groups, the assault ships Tripoli and Boxer with thousands of Marines aboard, and more than 20 warships in all are on station, with more than 50,000 US troops in the Middle East—by the military’s own account its largest force in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.