Taking Kharg would give the US control over virtually all of Iran's oil exports and thus provide significant leverage, notes Prem Panicker in his must read daily blog on the Gulf War.
It would also put American troops within range of Iran's remaining missiles, drones, and artillery on a piece of real estate that is just eight square miles in size, and just 15 miles from the Iranian mainland.
There is a particular danger in wartime that is less visible than missiles, and less dramatic than airstrikes, but often just as consequential: Leaders making decisions on partial, curated, or simply distorted information.
Wars generate fog and modern media systems refine it. The result is that leaders operate with a kind of selective clarity where what is seen is vivid, and what is unseen disappears entirely.
This would not be the first time intelligence has been shaped to fit the limited attention span of the man receiving it.
During his first term, Donald Trump's briefings were widely reported to be distilled into bullet points, graphics, even cue-card style summaries designed to hold his attention -- and that is when he sits for briefings at all. [Rolling Stone; Politico (external link); TIME (external link)]
Key Points
- US decision-making may rely on curated, limited intelligence inputs, raising risks of miscalculation during rapidly escalating conflict conditions.
- Military escalation is accelerating, with troop deployments and strikes expanding faster than diplomatic efforts can stabilise the situation.
- Strait of Hormuz disruption has severely impacted global oil, LNG, and fertilizer flows, triggering sharp price increases worldwide.
- Iran has shifted to a long-term attrition strategy, aiming to impose sustained economic and political costs rather than quick battlefield victories.
- India faces growing strategic pressure, balancing energy security, diplomacy, and BRICS tensions amid an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment.
Trump Briefings and War Optics
Now, amid an expanding conflict, emerging reporting suggests that Trump's view of the theatre of war consists of short, highly edited video clips, described as 'TikTok-style', emphasising successful strikes on Iranian targets but eliding Iranian retaliation and the broader strategic picture. [NBC (external link)]
The NBC story quotes White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying, 'That's an absolutely false assertion coming from someone who has not been present in the room. Anyone who has been present for conversations with President Trump knows he actively seeks and solicits the opinions of everyone in the room and expects full throated honesty from all of his top advisors.'
Leavitt's statement comes in the same week a bizarre video of a Trump-led meeting surfaced.
Stephen Miller spent three minutes praising Trump, who then turned to FBI Director Kash Patel and said, 'See if you can top that, Kash'. [YouTube (external link)] (Related, House Speaker Mike Johnson presented (external link) Donald Trump with the 'first-ever' America First Award -- specially created, as a gold statue. I'm trying to recall who and what this reminds me of.)
The NBC story outlines an information environment calibrated to feed into Trump's fantasies of America's -- and, by extension, his -- strength, and helps explain the dissonance between rhetoric and reality: Trump's repeated claims that 'we are winning bigly', that Iran is 'devastated', that there is 'no one to talk to' -- all this, even as the conflict expands and diplomacy remains formally, if thinly, alive.
Still staying with the bizarre, Trump while speaking at an event in Washington continued to insist that Iranian leaders are negotiating a ceasefire, despite Iran's categorical denial.
The money quote is this (emphasis mine): '..they want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it because they will be killed by their own people. They're also afraid they'll be killed by us.'
Why would the US kill those who are negotiating with it, is a question Trump did not get asked.
The United States, even while talking up negotiations, is preparing to deepen its military posture in the region.
Reports indicate plans to deploy roughly 3,000 additional airborne troops, a signal not of de-escalation but of an intent to widen and deepen the conflict. [Guardian on US troop deployment (external link)].
At the same time, the much-discussed US proposal to Iran, circulated through intermediaries, has found no traction.
Tehran dismissed the terms and denied that meaningful talks are underway, reinforcing the sense that diplomacy is, for now, more performative than operative. [Reuters on Iran rejecting talks (external link)].
Not only has Iran rejected the US proposal, it laid out five conditions of its own for ending the conflict: An end to aggression, sovereign guarantees against renewed hostilities, guaranteed payment of war damages and compensation, and US troops exiting all bases in the Gulf, among other demands. [AP (external link)]
US Troop Surge Signals Escalation
While the game of one-upmanship continues, on the ground escalation continues to outpace the diplomatic narrative.
Iran launched fresh missile barrages toward Israeli cities.
Israel for its part expanded the scope of the conflict, launching strikes beyond the immediate theatre of war, and widening the conflict. [Guardian live coverage of widening strikes (external link)].
The result is that this war is longer contained militarily, geographically, or politically.
What is new is not simply the scale of the violence.
Iran's messaging has hardened, suggesting that current proposals leave 'no hope' for negotiation.
Israel, meanwhile, continues to prosecute the war on its own terms, with no indication that its objectives are being moderated by diplomatic signaling from Washington.
And the United States itself appears caught between these two tracks: Advancing proposals on paper while reinforcing military options in practice.
India, watching all this unfold, has begun to shift from observer to stakeholder.
New Delhi has moved on multiple fronts in this 24-hour window, stepping up energy contingency planning and sourcing efforts, moving to shift to PNG where possible, and signaling concern about supply stability [Economic Times on India's energy response (external link); The Hindu (external link)].
Diplomatic engagement has intensified across actors -- Iran, Israel, the United States -- while public messaging continues to emphasize de-escalation without apportioning blame [Times of India on India's diplomatic outreach (external link)].
And, beneath the surface, the crisis is being reframed internally not as a distant geopolitical event but as a direct economic and strategic risk.
Taken together, the past 24 hours do not suggest a war moving toward resolution.
What is visible is something more unstable: A conflict in which military action is accelerating, diplomatic signaling is losing coherence, and key actors may not even be operating from a shared picture of reality.
In such conditions, miscalculation is a structural risk. And that, more than any single strike or statement, is what makes this moment dangerous.
Hormuz Disruption Shocks Global Trade
The numbers that don't lie
The clearest picture of what the Hormuz closure actually means came not from a government briefing or a news report, but from a real-time shipping tracker jointly developed by the WTO and maritime data firm AXSMarine and launched this week.
The data is stark. Crude oil outbound shipments from the Persian Gulf fell to near zero on February 28, the day the war began.
LNG and fertiliser-related shipments collapsed simultaneously.
The tracker records only AIS-transmitting vessels, so actual volumes may be understated.
But the trend across all commodity categories is unambiguous: outbound maritime trade through Hormuz has effectively ceased.
One key detail I hadn't noticed before: Crude shipments began dropping before Iran's formal closure announcement on March 2, indicating that markets and shipping operators were reading the signals ahead of the outbreak of war.
The scale of disruption this represents is significant: Roughly one-fifth of global oil supply, virtually all of Iran's LNG exports, and a significant share of global fertilizer shipments have all been halted.
Brent crude has surged more than 40 percent since February 28, peaking near $120 a barrel.
Americans are paying a dollar more per gallon than when the war began.
Grocery prices are beginning to follow diesel costs upward.
And the fertiliSer shortage created by the Hormuz closure is compounding food price pressures in ways that will take months to fully register.
By a distance, this is the most important thing I've come across this week.
As media reports on the occasional ship that comes through Hormuz, framing it like some major breakthrough, this gives me a wide-angle lens to understand what is happening in that vital chokepoint. [Strait of Hormuz trade tracker (external link)]
The war beneath the words
Robert Pape, the University of Chicago political scientist who has spent decades studying how States use force, offers the clearest analytical frame for reading what is happening beneath the noise of Trump's daily statements.
His argument, published yesterday, is simple: Ignore what is said. Watch what moves.
Trump's rhetoric alternates between signaling openness to talks and warning of severe consequences.
Each statement generates headlines.
None of it matters, says Pape -- the real signal lies in the physical infrastructure of escalation, and that infrastructure is expanding.
Since February, the US has surged more than 150 aircraft, two carrier strike groups, over a dozen warships, and tens of thousands of personnel into the region.
The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit is en route from Japan aboard the USS Tripoli, expected in the Gulf by the end of this week.
The 11th MEU aboard the USS Boxer is three to four weeks out from California.
The 82nd Airborne, comprising of forces designed for rapid insertion, and deployable within 18 hours, is being added to the structure.
Pape's control case is Greenland: There, vivid rhetoric threatened a full-scale takeover, but on the ground nothing moved, no forces were deployed, and therefore nothing happened.
The contrast clarifies the Iran picture precisely: Here troops are being deployed, and that shapes what leaders could do next. [Robert Pape on Substack (external link); Bloomberg (external link)]
BTW, every passing hour brings further signals that the US will put boots on the ground, probably as early as this weekend.
South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace just posted (external link): 'Just walked out of a House Armed Services briefing on Iran. Let me repeat: I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing.'
From Mace, this is doubly significant -- Mace had recently voted against the War Powers Resolution which would have required Trump to seek Congressional approval before putting boots on the ground.
The mine problem, and what it means
Beneath the deployment numbers lies an uncomfortable military reality, laid out in forensic detail by two of this week's best pieces, from The Atlantic and The Economist.
Iran has approximately 12 mines already in the Strait of Hormuz, with an estimated 5,000 in reserve.
Clearing them is the prerequisite for any convoy escort operation, but the US mine-warfare fleet is in significant disarray: The last Avenger-class minesweepers based in the region were decommissioned in January.
Two of the three replacement combat ships are currently in Singapore for maintenance.
The best you can say about the timing is that it was unfortunate; the worst, given that the US and Israel were at the time in early-stage discussions towards launching a war, brainless.
The asymmetry of the mine problem is brutal.
Any vessel can lay a mine, but clearing them requires specialiSed ships, specialized equipment, and time -- and all this has to be done under Iranian fire.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak estimated that reopening the strait would require two full American divisions, that is, at least 20,000 troops, for the long haul.
The broader military picture reinforces this. Iran has fired more than 1,200 ballistic missiles and 3,300 Shahed cruise missiles since February 28.
The US and Israel claim to have destroyed 90 percent of Iran's ballistic missile and drone capability, but the Bloomberg analysis of strike data suggests that after March 10, as many as a quarter of Iranian missiles are getting through.
The Khorramshahr missiles, with a range of 2,500 km and capable of carrying a 1,500-kilogram warhead, are being fired from eastern Iran, beyond the reach of most US-Israel strikes.
A degraded Iran firing fewer, better-aimed missiles is becoming more effective at imposing costs. The trajectory is moving in the wrong direction. [The Atlantic (external link); The Economist (external link); Bloomberg (external link)]
The Kharg problem
The Financial Times reported yesterday on what is now openly under discussion in Washington: The seizure of Kharg Island, where 90 percent of Iran's oil is loaded onto tankers.
US forces have already struck more than 90 targets on the island including naval mine storage facilities and missile bunkers, which former officials read as battlefield preparation rather than mere degradation.
One MEU is assessed as sufficient to take the island.
The USS Tripoli, with its V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, is the most likely platform for an air assault.
The 82nd Airborne could insert ahead of the Marines to seize terrain.
But the operational question and the strategic question pull in different directions.
Taking Kharg would give the US control over virtually all of Iran's oil exports and thus provide significant leverage.
It would also put American troops within range of Iran's remaining missiles, drones, and artillery on a piece of real estate that is just eight square miles in size, and just 15 miles from the Iranian mainland.
A post on X (external link) underlines how Iran views the threat of American views on the ground: 'We have just one message for the American soldiers: Come closer.'
And then there is the question that Nick Reynolds of RUSI poses at the end of the FT piece, and which no one in Washington appears to have a satisfying answer for: "What then?" [Financial Times (external link)]
In related reading, and keeping in mind that reopening Hormuz is one of the stated aims of this developing conflict, this explainer on what it takes to reopen the Strait is worth reading. [Bloomberg (external link)].
The war Iran is actually fighting
Two pieces published this week -- one in The Atlantic by Karim Sadjadpour, the other by Iranian affairs analyst Hamidreza Azizi -- taken together provide the clearest account of what Iran is actually doing, and why the US framing of the conflict keeps missing it.
Sadjadpour's argument is historical: Iran learned in 1983, in Beirut, that it did not need to defeat America on the battlefield.
It needed only to make the American people feel the war in their living room.
Ronald Reagan had resolve until Congress, taking the pulse of the people, didn't.
George W Bush had resolve, until six in ten Americans called his war a mistake.
Iran's path to victory has always run through American public opinion, not military outcomes.
The framing is elegant: Tehran wins by not losing; Trump loses by not winning.
The living-room strategy is now operating through Hormuz rather than truck bombs.
Fifty American states are paying more at the pump.
Fifty percent of Americans oppose the war; only 40 percent support it.
Iran is simultaneously amplifying Tucker Carlson, deploying the 'Epstein Axis' framing, and pushing the 'America First = Israel First' line, not to turn Americans against the war alone, but to turn Americans against each other.
Azizi provides the doctrinal framework beneath Sadjadpour's political argument.
Iran has shifted from deterrence-by-denial to deterrence-by-punishment.
The early strikes were not scattered: they followed a sequential logic: degrade detection systems first, complicate interception, then increase the effectiveness of follow-on strikes.
The shift to attrition is deliberate and active, intended to impose costs over time, and designed to raise the price of ever attacking Iran again.
Strategic victory, in Tehran's redefined conception, is not a battlefield outcome but a new equation in which the cost threshold for attacking Iran has been permanently elevated.
The most dangerous detail in Azizi's piece: The reported missile strikes toward Turkey, which Iranian armed forces said was unplanned.
That is what happens when decentralised command structures are under maximum pressure. [The Atlantic (external link); Hamidreza Azizi (external link)]
Iran Strategy: Attrition and Pressure
The regime that is stronger for being attacked
The regime was meant to weaken when struck. Instead, like the Hydra of Greek myth, each blow has produced something harder to kill.
Hindu mythology has a similar trope: Rakthabija, who could not be killed because every drop of his blood that was shed created another like him.
Something on those lines is now visible in Iran.
The Economist's report on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' consolidation of power is perhaps the most consequential piece of the week for understanding why the war's first stated objective -- regime change -- has failed.
The supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen or heard from since February 28. Senior figures including Ali Larijani have been killed.
What has filled the vacuum is not chaos but the IRGC -- 190,000 strong, now running both the state and the war.
People close to the regime describe a shift from theocracy to military junta.
'We've gone from divine power to hard power.'
The IRGC's resilience was by design.
Before the war, the corps was divided into 31 sub-districts, each with its own weapons stockpile, target banks, and autonomy to act if the central command failed or was taken off the board.
The Basij, the paramilitary volunteer militia established in 1979 within the IRGC, has dispersed into thousands of small mobile cells across mosques, schools, and bridges.
The political consequence is the one that matters most: Early Iranian celebrations at Khamenei's death have faded.
The bombing of civilian targets has dulled enthusiasm for regime change.
The IRGC now brands critics as enemy collaborators.
A teacher in Mashhad says, 'We used to talk about the end of the regime when the war stopped. Now we fear what to do with a regime that is stronger and more powerful than ever.'
Rakthabija, it turns out, was not a myth after all. [The Economist (external link)]
Who benefits -- and who is watching
China's position deserves a section on its own. Xi Jinping has said nothing publicly about the war, because he doesn't need to.
China's energy insulation is structural -- renewables ramp-up, roughly half of new car sales now electric, coal as backup -- and Chinese port container throughput is up six percent year-on-year in the first three weeks of March, despite the war.
In the short term, the conflict is delivering Beijing several things it values: US sanctions loosening on Russian and on Iranian oil, American military credibility taking a hit from asymmetric warfare, and US allies publicly refusing to join escort operations.
Chinese diplomats are quietly telling Tehran to 'seize every opportunity for peace', not because it wants to help Washington safe face but because a prolonged war that disrupts Chinese investment infrastructure across the Middle East is not in Beijing's interest.
Russia, meanwhile, is benefiting from US sanctions relief on Russian oil: a 30-day general licence already issued for Russian Urals sales to India, with broader relief under consideration.
The war that was supposed to project American strength is quietly rehabilitating Moscow's energy revenue position. [Bloomberg (external link); 1945 (external link)]
Another BRICS in the wall
India's position has become structurally more complicated in the past 24 hours, and the Bloomberg report on the BRICS deadlock explains why.
New Delhi holds the rotating BRICS chairmanship this year. Iran, a BRICS member since 2024, has directly asked India to support a condemnation of the US-Israel campaign.
The UAE, also a BRICS member since 2024, has blocked every draft that doesn't explicitly state that Iran is the aggressor.
Three draft statements have been attempted; two have been rejected.
India's own neutral draft, which condemns loss of life and calls for calm, was also blocked.
A third version, focused on energy market disruption, remains under discussion.
India Caught in BRICS Deadlock
India's position is being squeezed from multiple directions simultaneously: close ties with the US and Israel, historical links with Iran, heavy dependence on Hormuz oil flows, strong economic ties with Gulf nations where nearly 10 million Indians work, and now the BRICS chairmanship placing it at the centre of a deadlock it cannot resolve without alienating one or the other nation it cannot displease.
New Delhi's stated position that, as chair, it can facilitate but not take sides, is diplomatically defensible but increasingly difficult to sustain as the war extends. Iran's President Pezeshkian has publicly told Modi that BRICS should 'play an independent role in halting aggressions'.
That pressure is now on the record. [Bloomberg (external link)]
In closing...
There is a point in every war when agency gives way to momentum. This conflict is fast approaching that tipping point.
The deployments are in place, the economic shock is spreading, the adversary is recalibrating rapidly, and the political/diplomatic objectives are increasingly drifting out of reach. What remains is a set of bad options, each more costly than the previous one.
The question is no longer how this war is won. It is how long it takes before its underlying logic becomes undeniable, and who pays the price for delayed resolution.
- EARLIER BLOGS: The New Fog of War
- Has US Repeated Its Iraq Mistake?
- Hormuz Crisis Threatens Global Economy
- Iran War Exposes Washington's Strategic Chaos
- Iran Plays Hardball With India's Hormuz Requests
- Trump Is Caught Between Two Bad Options
- Iran Rewrites Rules of War
- Why Did Israel Kill Ali Larijani?
- Trump's War Has Crossed Energy Rubicon. And There's No Turning Back
- War Exposes Cracks in US-Israel Alliance
- Gulf War: Hormuz Is Becoming The Central Battlefield
- Will Trump's 5 Day Pause End The War On Friday?
- Trump's Pause Gives Iran NOTHING!
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff
