🇮🇷🇺🇸 Trump has reportedly talked about taking Kharg Island since the 1980s. Whether that's a plan or a decades-old fixation may decide what happens next
"We attacked Kharg Island last night," Trump told reporters.
"I said, don't touch the oil, because maybe we'll take over Kharg Island."
Karen Kwiatkowski traced that line back further than people realize, to television interviews from the late eighties where he floated the same idea about the same island.
Whether he's ever set foot there, she doubts it.
he fixation, she says, predates the war by decades.
Her read on the military reality is blunt: the island would be brutal to seize and worse to hold, and hitting it outright might be the more honest option than trying to run it. Iranian territory, Iranian defenses, and a very short list of allies willing to help occupy it.
What struck her more was the contrast with Washington's own strategy document, the one that talked about pulling back from the Middle East entirely.
Ships already committed, she thinks, don't come home easily once they're committed to something.
That gap between the stated plan and the moment-to-moment decisions is where she sees the real risk.
@karen4the6th, @WeTheBrandon
