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War on Iran: – Longer Range Missiles Threats – Fake Oil Release – Murray: “Seeing Trump Clearly”
Iran has fired two ballistic missiles at the U.S. base on the island Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The distance between Iran and Diego Garcia is about 4,000 kilometer. Officially Iran has been committed to not possess missiles with a range of more than 2,000 kilometer. Did it deceive the global public about their range?
No. In October 2025, after USrael had attacked Iran in the 12 day war, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had lifted the missiles restriction he had previously imposed. Iran’s longest distance missile, the Khorramshahr-4, has a range of about 2,000 kilometer when fitted with its regular 1.8 metric ton warhead. But, like any missile, it will fly further if one reduces its payload. Fitted with a 500 kg warhead a range of 4,000 kilometer becomes possible. Its effect on a target will however become less severe which in the end defeats its purpose.
Of the two missiles Iran fired against Diego Garcia one is said to have failed in mid flight while a second one was claimed to have been shut down by a U.S. Navy SM-3 air defense missile. That a U.S. Navy vessel near Diego Garcia was on alarm and ready to fire its air defenses tells us that the U.S. was already expecting such long range shots.
With the demonstration of a 4,000 range launch from Iran many other U.S. and U.S. allies’ bases are now on notice that they can become Iran’s targets. The launch against Diego Garcia was likely made to send that message.
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The U.S. Treasury has now indeed, as previously hinted, lifted sanction on Iranian oil in floating storage. The Treasury had claimed that Iran had 140 million barrels of crude available that could be released to sooth the markets. Iran however says that it no oil in storage. The Treasury waver will thus not lead to the release of any additional oil. Some future traders may well have fallen for the Treasury’s trickery but the real market squeeze will continue.
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Former ambassador for the UK Craig Murray is onto something when he asserts that Trump’s plan is, and was all along, to utterly destroy and defeat Iran:
The attack on Iran was always planned by Trump. He was not “bounced into it” by Israel. It had been in gestation for months. That fact had been held within a very tight circle to avoid both political opposition and institutional opposition from the US military and intelligence community.
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Trump’s naval blockade of Venezuela’s oil has secured a US monopoly of its sale and distribution. As with Iraq, only US-approved contractors can buy the oil and payments are made to a Trump-controlled account in Qatar, from which revenue is given to the Venezuelan government entirely at Trump’s discretion.
This audacious imperialist grab of the world’s largest oil reserve further insulated the USA against the effects of the forthcoming closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Again, the narrative is being spun that Trump did not foresee the closure of the Strait by Iran. That is plainly a nonsense – every commentary on a potential Iran war for half a century has focused on the Strait of Hormuz. The only possible explanation is that Trump does not mind the closure.
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Trump’s thrashing about to articulate objectives for the war in Iran is performative, a blind to cover his true and steadfast objective – simply the annihilation of Iran as a functioning state, the infliction of the maximum amount of death and infrastructural damage, the reduction of Iran to the condition of Libya.
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Destruction of Iran on the scale envisaged will take years of hard pounding. Again, it is planned – you don’t ask Congress for an installment of $200 billion for a war you plan to wrap up in a month. Again, Trump’s taunts about having already won, objectives being achieved and about possibly finishing soon, are all just smoke and mirrors. The scale and horror of what is planned for Iran has to be obfuscated to limit a public revulsion that would be echoed in parts of the state apparatus.
Netanyahu yesterday revealed an interesting part of the endgame – construction of an oil pipeline that brings Iran’s oil out to be shipped from a Mediterranean terminal in Israel. That is a breathtakingly audacious plan, but absolutely aligns with Netanyahu’s and Trump’s actions.
Let me encourage you to read Murray’s full argument. While there are still real world aspects that may argue against his theory I find it convincing.
The only defense Iran has against such a plan is to utterly trash the global markets by removing as much hydrocarbons from them as possible. That will, in theory, lead the world to squeeze the U.S. and Israel into changing their course.
But can outer pressure, asides from being at a nuclear level, have any real influence on Donald Trump?
Echos of Gallipoli? Hormuz and the Geography of Hubris In a naval chokepoint, always bet on the shore over the ship.
“The ghosts of 1915 still haunt the narrow waters of the Dardanelles. The Battle of Gallipoli remains one of history’s warnings against racist and strategic hubris. As geopolitical tensions rise and speculation grows about potential U.S. military action in the Strait of Hormuz, the shadow of the this far off battle should be casting a long, dark silhouette over modern war planning. But of course it isn’t.
Technology has evolved, the fundamental truths of geography and human resilience have not, and lessons sometimes need to be repeated. Gallipoli was born of overconfidence. The Allied powers, boasting superior naval technology and industrial might, assumed the Ottoman Empire would crumble under a naval bombardment followed by an amphibious landing. They were wrong.
The geography of the Dardanelles turned the Allied advantage into a liability. The narrow strait allowed a numerically inferior force to concentrate fire, mine the waters, and utilize the high ground to devastating effect. The result was a bloody stalemate, massive casualties, and a humiliating withdrawal. The parallels to the Strait of Hormuz are hard to miss.
Like the Dardanelles, Hormuz is a maritime chokepoint—narrow, shallow, and flanked by land that can be fortified. But where the Ottomans relied on artillery and mines, Iran has, over the last 30 years at least, built a layered, modern asymmetric arsenal designed specifically to exploit this geography.
Iran’s advantage isn’t in aircraft carriers or stealth fighters; it’s in the sheer density and dispersion of its missile and drone forces. Iran possesses the largest missile inventories in the Middle East, including thousands of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles cruise missiles, and precision-guided munitions capable of striking ships at sea. Many of these systems are mobile, hidden in tunnels, or dispersed among civilian infrastructure, making them exceptionally difficult to neutralize in a first strike.
Complementing the missiles is Iran’s drone fleet: the Shahed-136 and other loitering munitions that are cheap, hard to detect, and effective in swarms. In a confined space like Hormuz, a swarm of slow, low-flying drones can saturate a warship’s defenses, forcing it to expend precious interceptors or risk being overwhelmed. The Houthis defeated the US Navy in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb with far less.
This is the modern iteration of the Gallipoli lesson: a force perceived to be less advanced, fighting on home terrain, can use asymmetric tools to negate a superior adversary’s technological edge. The Ottomans used the high ground and narrow waters to blunt Allied naval power. Iran will use coastal missile batteries, underwater mines, and drone swarms to turn the strait into a contested kill zone. The U.S. Navy is unquestionably more powerful, but power means little if it cannot be brought to bear without unacceptable cost.
Differences, of course, exist. Modern precision weaponry allows for strikes that were impossible in the era of biplanes and battleships. Yet defense has also evolved. In WWI, mines were contact-based; today, they are sophisticated, influence-activated, and difficult to clear. Furthermore, the stakes are different. Gallipoli was a theater of war; Hormuz is the throat of the global economy.
A blockade or prolonged engagement there triggers immediate worldwide recession, adding a layer of pressure the Allies never faced in the Aegean. History offers other grim comparisons. Operation Market Garden in WWII and the battle for Gostomel Airport in Ukraine both illustrate the perils of assuming an enemy will collapse under the shock of a rapid airborne assault. In both cases, planners underestimated the defender’s ability to regroup and strike back. And both failed because the armor couldn’t reach the paratroopers, underscoring the danger of betting on shock over substance.
Even if the American paratroopers were to create a beachhead in Hormuz, the operation would fail without naval support and successful landing of the marines, just as in Market Garden, where Arnhem was “A Bridge Too Far”. Then there is Iwo Jima. While an American victory, it serves as a cautionary tale regarding fortified defenses. The Japanese forces, dug into volcanic rock, inflicted massive casualties on the Marines despite overwhelming U.S. air and naval superiority.
The underground tunnels of Iwo Jima find their modern equivalent in Iran’s buried missile silos, drone launch sites, and command centers. You cannot bomb what you cannot find, and it is difficult to occupy terrain that is designed to deny you footing.
The lesson for any modern planner looking at Hormuz is not to doubt American firepower, but to respect the defender’s will, the terrain’s tyranny, and the multiplying effect of asymmetric technology. Gallipoli taught us that a narrow strait favors the shore over the ship. Iran has spent decades learning that lesson and building a force to exploit it. Market Garden and Gostomel taught us that speed and surprise do not guarantee success. Iwo Jima taught us that fortifications, and the determination behind them, multiply defensive power exponentially. The Dardanelles remains a graveyard of ships and reputations.
To ignore the lessons of that campaign while eyeing the Strait of Hormuz, especially while underestimating the disruptive potential of drones, missiles, and mines, is to invite a catastrophe not of capability, but of imagination. The map has not changed, even if the weapons have. And in a naval chokepoint, always bet on the shore over the ship.”
https://x.com/Ashesof_Pompeii/status/2036397798682194139
Posted by: Allen | Mar 24 2026 14:42 utc | 1361
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