← Kharg Island and the Uranium Raid

Globes: Between two days and two weeks, what a ground operation in Iran would look like

On 29 March 2026, Globes, an Israeli business daily, published in Hebrew בין יומיים לשבועיים: כך צפוי להיראות מבצע קרקעי באיראן, by יובל פסו, Yuval Peso. It is a daily roundup of foreign reporting about Israel, not a Globes investigation. An American family should care because the second item says the assessment was growing that President Donald Trump would send thousands of American soldiers to seize Kharg Island, the island Globes says accounts for 90 percent of Tehran's oil exports. Globes says the items are taken from major foreign papers and do not necessarily reflect Globes's own view.

Background for new readers: On 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel began a joint air war on Iran. The Pentagon calls its part Operation Epic Fury; Israel calls its part Operation Roaring Lion. It came eight months after a shorter war in June 2025, when US bombers hit Iran's nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The question running through this section is whether the air war turns into American soldiers fighting on Iranian soil. This article is filed under Kharg Island and the Uranium Raid; the full article index lists every article on this shelf.

Evidence rating: MODERATE. Globes relays CNN's reporting and the estimates of the named analyst Carl Schuster. The CNN article was not opened separately.

What the article says

Globes introduces the roundup as a short daily look at how the world press is writing about Israel. It warns that the pieces come from large foreign papers and do not necessarily reflect Globes's worldview.

The ground-forces item is the second of three. The first, from The New York Times, says Iran can still fire missiles and drones. The third, from Eurasia, is about the Houthis and energy routes. The second item is the one about American soldiers.

גוברת ההערכה כי נשיא ארה"ב דונלד טראמפ ישלח אלפי חיילים אמריקאים להשתלט על אי הנפט של איראן - אי ח'ארג, שאחראי ל־90% מייצוא הנפט של טהרן.

That sentence is on the Globes page, 29 March 2026, in the item Globes attributes to CNN, by Brad Lendon. Globes immediately qualifies it. Kharg, it says, is only one of dozens of Iranian islands in the Gulf, and others may matter more for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. It names seven as the core of what researchers call Iran's arc defense: Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, Hengam, Qeshm, Larak, and Hormuz. It says a 2022 paper by researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in China argued that a curve drawn through those islands helps explain Iran's control of the strait.

Globes, still summarizing CNN, says the islands sit so close together, in water shallow enough, that large warships and tankers must pass near three of them. That, it says, makes the ships easy targets for fast Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps boats, minelayers, or drones flying from the islands. Because the islands cannot be sunk, it says, the Iranian forces on them would have to be neutralized before American warships could pass safely. It quotes Schuster saying the islands are placed to control every ship entering or leaving the Gulf.

Schuster, as Globes quotes him, said it might take all of that force to seize the islands, and that he would use two Marine units to lock in total superiority. Globes says a seizure could come from the air or the sea. It says U.S. Navy ships carry landing craft that can reach beaches, but that entering the Gulf could be dangerous because of Iranian defenses on islands such as Hormuz, Larak, Qeshm, and Hengam, and from the Iranian mainland.

Globes says CNN reported that forces from two Marine units, about 4,000 soldiers, were on their way to the region, along with about 1,000 soldiers. Schuster, it says, thought an operation might last from two days to two weeks, and could bring control of traffic watching in the strait and stop the islands being used as drone bases. After a seizure, Globes says, about 1,800 to 2,000 soldiers would be needed to hold the islands and keep Iran from using them again. It also says seizing the islands could have a political cost: the United Arab Emirates has claimed some of them since 1971, and that dispute could reach an international court. Schuster's closing line, as Globes gives it, is that there are no perfect solutions, and that every option carries costs, risks, and consequences, some expected and some not.

What other reporting adds

The same day's US reporting. The Washington Post's Dan Lamothe posted: "The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, U.S. officials said, as thousands of American soldiers and Marines arrive in the Middle East for what could become a dangerous new phase of the war should President Donald Trump choose to escalate." (Dan Lamothe on X, 29 March 2026; research capture: twitter/t51__v603.md). The Telegraph, citing US officials who spoke to Reuters, gave the same Kharg figure as Globes: the island is "responsible for 90 per cent of Iran's oil exports" (The Telegraph, 20 March 2026; research capture: twitter/t13__v147.md).

Is an island "boots on the ground"? Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, argued in March that Marines holding an island would not count: "The island is not, in my opinion, boots on the ground in combat circumstances. It's not like inside Iran in the cities." (as rendered on Threads, 17 March 2026; research captures: twitter/t52__v613.md, twitter/t52__v616.md). Critics answered that an Iranian island is Iranian soil.

The risk Schuster describes. Joe Kent, Trump's former counterterrorism director, is quoted in a Reddit comment: seizing Kharg "would essentially be giving Iran a bunch of hostages on an island that they could barrage with drones and missiles" (research capture: twitter/t51__v601.md; original source not found). A contributor on a debunking forum noted the islands are "too close to the Iranian shore within easy artillery range" (research capture: twitter/t51__v602.md).

What it shows

An Israeli business daily told its readers that the assessment was growing that Trump would send thousands of American soldiers to seize Kharg Island. It then laid out what an island campaign would take: two Marine units to seize the islands that guard the Strait of Hormuz, two days to two weeks of fighting, then 1,800 to 2,000 soldiers left behind to hold them.

Those soldiers are American. Holding Iranian islands within range of drones and artillery is the step from raid to occupation that this section's troop math warns about, and a congressman had already argued that an island "is not, in my opinion, boots on the ground." See Kharg Island and the Uranium Raid and Troop Math.

Check it yourself

• The article is at https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001538782. The CNN article by Brad Lendon, the New York Times piece, and the Eurasia piece were not opened separately.
• Dan Lamothe's scoop post, The Washington Post reporter, 29 March 2026.
• Research captures: twitter/t13__v147.md, twitter/t51__v601.md, twitter/t51__v602.md, twitter/t51__v603.md, twitter/t52__v613.md, twitter/t52__v616.md.

Status: Yuval Peso is alive. Donald Trump is alive. Carl Schuster is alive. This page reports an estimate Globes attributes to CNN and to Schuster. It does not accuse them of a crime.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26