By Dr. Jack Rasmus
This past weekend, Trump threatened to escalate the War with Iran by destroying that country’s energy infrastructure starting, as he said, “with the big one”. The ‘big one’ was no doubt a veiled reference to Iran’s civilian nuclear plants.
Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant had been hit with a US missile a few days earlier as a warning. As he announced his plan to destroy all of Iran’s civilian nuclear infrastructure, Trump further declared Iran had 48 hours to capitulate before the US attack. The price of oil jumped and stock market futures began to fall within 24 hours of Trump’s threat.
Before the 48 hours were up, on Monday morning, March 23, an hour before the US stock markets opened, Trump announced Iran had approached him and asked for negotiations. Therefore he, Trump, was now suspending the attack on Iran for five more days, i.e. to the end of the current week.
The five day extension had nothing to do with negotiations, which Iran announced had never taken place. Trump made it up. The five day extension was yet another move by Trump administration officials to stabilize the US stock markets and the price of oil, both of which were set to spike. Within hours of announcing his five day suspension on Monday, US oil prices (WTI) fell $10 a barrel to $90 and stock markets opened higher after a string of declines last week.
Since the war began on February 28, Trump and various administration officials have repeatedly said publicly that negotiations were occurring, were showing progress, or even that the war was about to ‘end soon’, as Trump himself declared.
The pattern shows such false statements were, and remain, mostly about keeping financial markets from falling too fast and to prevent oil prices from rising too fast.
But there’s another explanation for Trump’s about face and his five day suspension of the US attack on Iran’s nuclear energy infrastructure.
That’s Trump’s buying time to get US military forces into the region in order to launch a ground assault into Iran, to coincide with his plan to bomb Iran’s nuclear and civilian energy infrastructure.
Here’s some facts why the five day suspension is really about buying time for much larger US military preparation.
The mainstream US media keeps reporting that a contingent of about 2,000 US marines are en route by sea on the US landing ship, US Tripoli, coming from Asia to the Persian Gulf. If we are to believe the media, the US intends to invade Iran with just a couple battalions of Marines.
Trump’s buying time to get US military forces into the region in order to launch a ground assault into Iran, to coincide with his plan to bomb Iran’s nuclear and civilian energy infrastructure.
The Marines plan to land in the Strait of Hormuz area. The US will somehow seize the strait and allow oil tankers to sail through it again. The media’s is also promoting the view that a second possible landing target is Iran’s Kharg Island, where 90% of Iran’s crude oil is refined and shipped. Kharg is close to the coast of Iran, well into the Persian Gulf’s upper end and closer to Kuwait than to the Hormuz strait. The media refers to Trump’s own social media posts where he mentions Kharg Island as a good target for the Marines. Israel’s number one mouthpiece in the US Senate, Lindsey Graham, gives daily press conferences during which he refers to taking Kharg Island as well.
But it’s all a deception.
In fact, the entire 2000 Marines on the US Tripoli may be a deception.
That raises the question: Is the US actually planning an invasion of Iran; and if so where if not Kharg Island or Hormuz?
Sending 2000 Marines to seize territory around Hormuz or Kharg Island is militarily a stupendous strategic blunder in waiting should it be undertaken. It’s hard to imagine any senior US military advisor recommending that.
First, how would 2000 Marines get through the Hormuz strait and sail up the Persian Gulf to assault Kharg Island? They would be sitting ducks all the way, presuming they could even get through the strait. Furthermore, could a mere 2000 hold Kharg if they were even able to land and seize it? Marine battalions don’t carry radars and anti-missile batteries in their inventories. They would be massively attacked by missiles and extremely difficult to re-supply.
The same applies to the other islands in the Hormuz strait, like Bander Abbas. It takes only one Iranian missile to end the Tripoli and all its 2000 on board.
The fact that US officials, according to Trump and the media, publicly mention Kharg Island and the Hormuz strait as landing targets should be an indicator there’s no intention of occupying Kharg or other Islands in the strait. The US does not discuss in public its military objectives. Therefore they are almost certainly not the targets!
There’s growing evidence, however, that when the US invasion comes—and it is coming—the landing is likely to occur elsewhere the media or Trump is not mentioning. There’s currently a massive US military build up underway, blacked out by the media, involving more than just a Marine battalion. There’s a traditional US military forces mobilization being sent to the region, more like the build up that occurred in early 2003 before the Iraq war.
Two US Airborne divisions, the 82nd and the 101st, have been activated and are reportedly en route to the region. So too are two US Army Ranger battalions. Another US Marine brigade has left the US for the region but will take weeks to arrive. It will likely relieve the first Marine force arriving on Friday. That’s a combined military force of 20,000.
And it’s been reported by some former US military officers that they’ve been informed two traditional US Army divisions are being prepared to go as well. That’s another 50,000. Saudi Arabia and UAE have indicated they will join the coalition for an assault. That’s now a total force of more than 75,000 ground troops! No way they are going to land on Kharg or some other island in the strait.
The US media briefly indicated last week that US forces are leaving the big US base in Baghdad, Iraq and redeploying to northern Iraq’s Kurd region, which borders on northwest Iran. The US air force is redeploying air assets to Turkey’s big Incirlik NATO air base, a mere 40 minute flight from northwest Iran.
When the Iran war first began in late February, there was much talk about the Kurdish forces in northeast Iraq entering Iran. Azerbaijan was also indicated. It is well known Azerbaijan is closely allied with Israel’s Mossad. It was a flight back after visiting Azerbaijan some months ago that the former president of Iran was mysteriously killed as both his helicopters were blown up in the air.
In Iran’s northwest there are large populations of Kurds and Azeris. But after a short reporting by the media on the possibility of getting the Kurds to invade early in the war, all the talk about an invasion by these US-Israel ‘allies’ from the northwest went silent in the media.
The northeast Kurdish region is also where US based military formations formerly in Baghdad until last week are relocating. Is this perhaps where the two US airborne divisions and two Ranger battalions might be sent—i.e. instead of Kharg Island or Hormuz? Is a general ground invasion into Iran from planned from the northwest?
Possibly. Perhaps even likely. Why? Because it is geographically not very far from Teheran, the capital of Iran.
From Kurdish Mosul in northeast Iraq, and from Astara in Azerbaijan’s southernmost tip next to Iran, it is less than 200 miles to Teheran in both cases. The Kurds and Azeris might seize and hold much of the northwest region of Iran where sizable ethnic populations of Kurds and Azeris live. The combined forces of Kurds, Azeris, US Rangers, US airborne could together invade. The two full US Army divisions then might land in Incirlik or Mosul in Kurdish Iraq and cross into Iran to provide heavy armor follow up support for the invasion.
Israel will not likely take part in the coalition invasion. It is too busy invading its near neighbors: Lebanon, Syria, Palestine (west bank), and GAZA.
This is not to say for certain that Northwest region of Iran and Teheran is the actual target for a US invasion. But it makes more sense militarily than sending insufficient US Marine battalions on ships into the Hormuz strait or deep into the Persian Gulf to Kharg Island. Or using US Ranger and Airborne divisions to land either in Hormuz or Kharg. And certainly not to mobilize two full armored Army divisions.
Israel will not likely take part in the coalition invasion. It is too busy invading its near neighbors.
Trump’s war objective is to destroy the current government in Iran. The US objective has always been regime change. He does not want a negotiated compromise. His talk about negotiations is therefore a deception and a lie believed by only the most naïve or who get their information from the mainstream US media. For Trump and the US empire, negotiations are just a tactic and prelude to military action. The Iranians learned that twice, once last June 2025 and on February 27, 2025. So did the Venezuelans. So have the Russians in 2015, 2022, and, I would argue, since last August at Anchorage, Alaska.
So far the Trump goal of regime change in Iran has failed: The CIA engineered popular uprising this past January-February was ill-timed, launched too early, and put down by Iran completely. Nor has limited military action by the US and Israel thus far—i.e. naval blockade, bombings, decapitation strikes, etc. Trump has therefore decided on more massive, direct military invasion.
All indications are Trump has decided to roll the military invasion dice to try to bring the war to a conclusion sooner rather than later. He can’t afford to wait until summer. The deteriorating US and global economy won’t allow it. Nor voters in the coming November elections.
The longer Iran can continue its missile war, the greater the threat to the US and western economies. It doesn’t need to ‘win’. Just not to lose for another three months. The economic impact will take its toll by then. Trump can try to talk down the markets and spot oil prices in order to obfuscate the economic impact of the war for a relatively short time further. But he knows he must escalate, beyond traditional regime change CIA methods and/or limited military action, to a direct military ground war. Or as they say, “boots on the ground.” And it looks increasingly like that’s his plan sometime next weekend, or soon after.
Perhaps he should remember how ‘boots on the ground’ turned out the last time the US resorted to invasion and direct military action in 2001-03 in Afghanistan and Iraq! Someone should remind him the estimated $9 trillion dollars that it cost the US taxpayer, its effect on the US economy and the paltry results produced.
Perhaps he should keep in mind US defense expenditures in 2001 were only $396 billion, US GDP that year 4.1%, and the national debt $5.6 trillion costing $350 billion a year in interest payments?
And that a US land invasion war is happening on a US defense spending of $1.1 trillion (plus another $200 billion requested by Defense Secretary Hegseth and a further $400 billion by Trump himself), a US GDP of only 0.7% last quarter, and a national debt exceeding $39 trillion and costing $1.2 trillion in interest payments! The US Empire can no longer afford costly direct military conflicts and invasions. Those days are over.
Wars are always very expensive affairs. And land invasion wars are especially expensive. The US empire could not afford its last land invasions in 2001-03 that cost $9 trillion. Today it is in a far worse condition economically to afford yet another direct military land invasion in Iran.
The US economy has already entered early stages of recession in 2026. The only forces holding it up from a deeper contraction are Net Exports (mostly falling imports due to tariffs) and an AI investment bubble that cannot continue. Employment is now contracting and Inflation is beginning to surge along multiple fronts. Stagflation is now rearing its ugly head.
But Trump thinks it will all be over quick, as his neocon advisors and Zionist campaign contributors and lobbyist have no doubt assured him. And if it isn’t quick? Well, there’s always his plan to try to overturn the upcoming November elections to save himself.
So Buckle up! It’s 2003 déjà vu. But this time the economic—and political—consequences will prove far more disruptive and difficult to manage.
About the Author
Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, 2020. He publishes at Predicting the Global Economic Crisis.
