Harrison Mann, former US Army major who resigned in 2024 from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s CIA, over the Biden administration’s policy in Gaza, affirmed that, from day two of the war on Iran, the Trump administration has not known what to do and how to get out of this.
On the American side, it’s just totally strategically bankrupt. Again, no plan after the first 24 hours, when it didn’t immediately turn into Venezuela with a seemingly successful regime replacement operation.
As Trump is rumored to be eyeing the oil export hub of Kharg Island for seizure, Mann gives his assessment of a potential ground invasion of Iran. “Any attempt to seize this island would be close to a suicide mission,” he says.
“I think resupply or even insertion or evacuation by sea is extremely dangerous, for all the weapons I mentioned, plus Iran, as has been discussed in the news, can mine these waters, both around the island and in the Strait of Hormuz. They have drone boats in addition to aerial drones. If you want to try and do resupply or reinforcement by air, that might be possible, but it’s possible to ambush aircraft, as well. We saw the Houthis do it in the campaigns in the Red Sea over the past two years. So even aerial resupply or insertion would be quite fraught.”
While US leaders struggle to respond to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on military bases in US-allied Gulf states, Mann notes that the people who drove [Trump] into this war pretty much expected this.
“I don’t think this is a surprise to Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio or Benjamin Netanyahu — who is very much getting what he wanted, which is dragging the US into what he hopes will be a decisive war of annihilation against Iran.”
The top US counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigned on Tuesday in protest over the Iran war, writing that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation” in his resignation letter to President Donald Trump.
Trump later told reporters “it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat. Every country recognized Iran was a threat.”
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