Anthony Aguilar watched the map fill in with me in real time: Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, Bushehr, Jask, Abu Musa, and Chabahar, where footage shows the maritime control tower that runs the port reduced to a shell.
Reports of power outages rippling up the coast are unconfirmed, but if they hold, he says, a grid was on the target deck.
This after Iran put 85 missiles into Kuwait and Bahrain, two countries smaller than Rhode Island.
His read of the strategy came down to one image: you want to charge a toll, we blow up the toll booth.
CENTCOM calls it degrading threats to shipping.
Anthony sees the pathway of a force preparing to punch through and hold the strait, with Bushehr as the gateway to controlling Kharg without a boot on the ground.
Then his sharpest claim, offered as his own: the MOU was never meant to reach fruition.
The pause bought time to restock and reposition, and the war plan briefed before the deal is the one unfolding now.
Still, he thinks the U.S. blinks first.
Hundreds of missiles spent against a defender who only has to survive, and the deal after the smoke, in his forecast, looks a lot like the one before it.
