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Prof. Jiang: Kharg Island Landing Leads to Draft
Jiang Xueqin, geopolitical analyst and commentator. Tom Bilyeu Clips (Impact Theory), Impact Theory, March 20, 2026.
Tom Bilyeu Clips (Impact Theory) · posted 2026-03-20 · 17:13
Added to this site: September 27, 2026 · Transcribed: September 27, 2026
Original: youtube.com/watch?v=urqU9cZgK1k · IPFS QmWEByyfTqTLTw4xr4f1KJR3R1xSLCTvW3ZXDe9YMKV2bh
What this video shows
Jiang Xueqin, known online as "Professor Jiang," is described by the show as a geopolitical analyst and strategic commentator. He is interviewed by Tom Bilyeu, host of Impact Theory. About six minutes in, Bilyeu asks whether President Trump will "push into" Kharg Island, the small island off Iran's coast that handles about 90% of Iran's oil exports, and whether he "goes all the way to a ground invasion."
Jiang lays out the plan as he sees it (about 7–8 minutes in): a Marine expeditionary unit, about 2,500 Marines trained for amphibious landings (landing from ships onto a beach), is sailing from Japan; the coast is bombarded, the Marines land and secure Kharg's oil depots, and Trump declares victory. Then he walks through how it grows (about 12–13 minutes in): Marines on Kharg are exposed to drones and artillery from the coast, so tens of thousands more Marines are needed to take the coastline, and then missiles from the Zagros Mountains, "which means that now you have to invest 100,000 troops to go after Iran's underground missile facilities." He compares it to Vietnam, where the first Marines landed in 1965 at about 3,500 and five years later there were 500,000 American soldiers:
"So once you send in ground troops, then it creates a logic, a momentum of its own, and then you have mission creep ... and then eventually you have an actual draft, okay?"
Bilyeu agrees and describes how the public would be walked into it (about 14 minutes in): once Kharg is taken and Americans don't "super freak out," people start saying, "I guess we already have boots on the ground, so it's not so crazy that we go, like, just try to finish the job real quick." Near the end, Jiang says a war that spirals out of control could lead to the National Guard at home and "the natural draft." The clip spells out, step by step, how a "small" island landing turns into a ground war on Iranian soil and a draft of American citizens.
Where this fits: this clip is one of the TV clips calling for American boots on the ground in Iran. For the full story, what the public was told next to what was happening, see American Soldiers on the Ground in Iran — Videos.
Transcript
Machine transcription (apple-speechanalyzer · Source duration: 00:17:13 · Transcript covers: 00:17:13 ✓ full) made with Large File Bridge on September 27, 2026. It can mishear names and words, so check exact wording against the video before quoting it.
We have to assume that the Americans, under Trump, were planning for a short, decisive war, to control Iran. And once you control Iran, you control the entire strait of homus. You control all the resources. You can control global trade, right?
Also, what's really important is you prevent a Russia, Iran, China alliance from forming, okay? Because once that happens, once China, Russia, and Iran come together and trade and create this, trading block. It achieves the heartland, right? And then Europe comes in, then the Middle East comes in, then Africa comes in food breaks.
So, from an etemic perspective. Americans didn't have a choice in the matter, and that the US scholar was extremely unstable. People didn't have any faith in it anymore. And so you had to use force to remind people that the US dollar is still the only global reserve currency.
And so they went into Iran, hoping to control that crucial choke point of resources in trade, and it's really blow up in their faces. Okay, so you've put a couple pieces together that I think are really important and I'm going to say it in a slightly different way and see if this lands for you. So, uh, 1971, Nixon breaks the, um, peg to gold, you become a true fiat currency. There's now no real tether for you.
The world begins to realize, okay, hold on a second. This is just VI. You guys are going to print out of control like every empire before you. And so Nixon does this brilliant thing and he finds 2 avenues to keep making the dollars systemically important.
He gets essentially the vast majority of oil trade to be only transacted in dollars. Presumably, you didn't say this, but I think it's basically we'll protect you, dear GCC countries. So you can't really protect yourself, super exposed there in the desert. Don't worry, we've got you.
You guys focus on infrastructure, desalinization, all that stuff. and we'll run your military for you. That works out very well. Hey, China, we need cheap labor, but hey, we'll make sure that we're buying a lot of the stuff that you're producing.
Just make sure that you're also doing trade in dollars. So you've got energy now pegged to dollars and you've got this industrial revolution, not the one that most people think of when they hear that, but this new rise of China as the world's manufacturer also now being tied to dollars. Then, because, of course, as empires do, they overextend, they bully, they do things that ultimately are against their own interest, and we begin eroding the trust in the dollar, which is the only thing left on a fiat currency. And so the part that I want to reword is when you say that we use our military to remind people of the power of the dollar or that we're strong or whatever, I would say it slightly differently, and this gets to why Iran becomes so important, like what actually happens in Iran, is it isn't enough to remind everybody that you have a big military.
You actually have to get control of Iran. You have to control the oil now. You have to control the Strait of Hormuz. And if you either are forced to destroy the oil, which now is going to just have a massive negative impact on the global economy, or because of asymmetric warfare, Iran continues to cause a problem in the Strait of Hormuz, and its technically open, but every time a U.
S. or U.S. Allied ship tries to go through, it gets blown up, now all of a sudden, you may have reminded everybody that you have the stronger military, but Iran is showing you they can still control the thing you must get control of if you want to win.
Okay, um, I would disagree because you are saying that the Americans went in hoping for a Venezuela solution, right? Where they, uh, removed Maduro, and that's where Rodriguez, the vice president, was very happy to play along. So it's basically a regime change, that favor the Americans. So let's just discuss how the interests of Israel in the interest of Trump are different, right?
Because as you point out, Trump is interested in optics. He wants a quick victory. He wants, um, uh, the Iranians to uh, surrender to him, and he wants to be, to be able to control the old supply so that he, when he goes to Beijing, um, at the end of this month, um, he can negotiate a great deal for America, and he will, and he will look really, really, uh, good, right? Because he just came off a very decisive victory in Venezuela.
So, you know, he was very error again. He was very confident. That's Trump. But I think it's really, are thinking much more long term, and they really want to eliminate, um, Iran as a threat, um, in the Middle East.
And it's just not the Israelis as well. If you look at Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have always had issues with Iranians. So I think it was a coalition of interests. Um, this release, in the Saudis, who were pushing Trump to attack Iran.
And actually, reporting from the Russian Poles actually confirms this, where MBS, the head of Saudi Arabia. He was lobbling hard for Trump to attack the Iranians. The thing that I want to understand better is given the quagmire that we are now in with Iran, what are the options that are on the table, especially for Trump? So if you agree that for the U.
S. to actually have gained ground here, they need to control the Strait of Hormuz, or by some miracle, get a friendly government in Iran that will maintain control, but do things that are very beneficial to the GCC countries, to the US, to Israel, which seems sort of farther away by the day. But, um, if he has to do that, do you think he's going to push into uh, Carga Island and take over, it's like 94%, do you think he goes all the way to a ground invasion? What do you think are the options at this point given the realities on the ground?
So what I what I've observed is that Trump in America, um, they're behaving exactly the way that an Empire decline behaves, which is that they suffer from a toxic and lethal combination of both hubris and desperation. Meaning that they continue to underestimate the resilience and resolve of the Iranians, and they are desperate for a knockout punch as quick as possible. Trump wants this war and as soon as possible because he knows that the longer this war drags on, the worse the economy will suffer, the worse his pulling will be, and the more likely the star market will tag. So he's looking for a knockout punch.
And right now, um, if you're looking for a quick solution. If you're looking for a gamble. Well, your best option is Carg Island, because as you point out, that is where Iran exports 90%, it's oil, make primarily to China. So right now, a marine exponentiary force is traveling from Japan to the Middle East.
And we should expect them to arrive maybe in about a week. And there's about 2500 of them. And they specialize in amphibious landing. So the idea is that they will bombard the coastline in Clark Island, and this will enable, um, the Marines to land and secure the oil depots of Cart Island.
And at this point, Trump will declare a victory and try to get Iranians to the negotiating table and says, listen, I have Card Island, and this is your economic lifeline. So let's cut a deal that allows us to both say face. Okay? And I think that is the plan, but there are a lot of issues with this plan.
Okay? The 1st issue is that Card Island is not as important economically, as people believe. Um, that's the 1st issue, meaning that even if you were to secure cart island. Iran does have workarounds where they can just ship from um, from the coast.
Um, that's issue number one. Issue number 2 is that Iran needs financing for this war. And now they're using this oil as financing, as cloud over financing. But if the Chinese and the Russians believe that the Americans want to strangle Iran, then it's not in their best interests to see Iran destroyed.
They're not going to provide financing anyway. And look, the reality is that now that oil is shooting up in price, this benefits Russia tremendously, right? So putting can take all this oil riches and finance Iran, um, in finance war, because Russia has the most to lose if Iran loses this war and there's regime change. So that's issue number two.
Russia has more to lose than China? I do. I do. And the reason why is that if Iran were to fall, this opens up the Russian Southern flag to the Americans, right?
Because Azerbaijan is an Israeli American ally. And, um, if Iran were to fall, then, um, the Americans and Israelis could stage operations, uh, from the south. Also, Iran has been providing a lot of support to Russia and the Ukraine war. So Russia is getting most of its drones from Iran.
So, um, uh, foreign minister, uh, Sergey Labov has said that, uh, Russia will protect Iran, and Russia is most interested in, um, the Iran government staying intact. And there's been reporting from American news outlets that American intelligence believes that Russia's providing targeting for the Iranians. So all these drone strikes, all these missile strikes, they're getting intelligence and targeting from the Russians, which, by the way, is what NATO did in Ukraine, right? So from the Russian perspective, it's payback.
So the Russians are heavily invested in Iranians winning this war. The Chinese are promatic. They don't they really don't care. They see Iran more as a major supplier of oil that they that they need.
But if they need to shift, um, uh, supply routes, they can, they can do so, right? So the Russians are heavily invested. And so they were finance, the Iranians, regardless, if Iran is no longer able to export oil, okay? And another issue is this.
If you attack the economic lifeline of Iran, they now have incentive to strike at the oil refineries of the GCC. Right? Because, no matter how much, you know, damage you can do to Iran. They can do so much more to the GCC.
Um, and this would cause the oil, the price of oil to spike. Remember, Iranus have said that their goal is to spike the price of oil to $200 a barrel. Now it's $100 a barrel. And so what they're saying is that we're going to fight a very long war attrition that could last years.
Um, so, so, I don't see what the statistic benefit of taking cart island is. And the last problem, and this is the most important is that, um, once you take cart Island, you expose the Marines to drone strikes and artillery strikes from the coast, which means that you now need to send in more Marines to secure the coast, right? So you send in 2000,3000 troops to secure a car island. You done that easily.
Uh, um, but they can't secure, they can't secure the island against uh, Iranian drones. So the only way you can do that is by taking taking the coastline along Clark Island. You do that with 10s of 1000s of Marines. But then you expose, um, these marines to attacks from the mountains, the Zagros mountains, right?
These drones, these missiles from the Zagros mountains, which means that now you have to invest 100,000 troops to go after Iran's underground missile facilities. And this is exactly what happened in Vietnam. The great irony of all this is that the, um, marine expeditionary force that is going to, um, Iran is the same force that went into Vietnam and marked the, um, the 1st major ground involvement of the Americans in about 1965. They basically went into Dagnan and secured the Air Force Base.
And at 1st it was like 3500 soldiers. And that was supposed to be it. Like 5 years later, you had 500,000 American soldiers, right? So once you send in ground troops, then it creates a logic, a momentum of its own, and then you have mission creep, and then some cost out, let's see, um, and then eventually you have an actual draft, okay?
So that is a great danger of taking Car Island at this point. Okay, so let's keep pushing down that road because I think that you're bang on with this. I think if Trump puts boots on the ground, in Iran, I think he can get away with Carg Island because it will be small, it will feel like, hey, we're doing this very discrete thing. We can take it in, you know, a couple days, we've got it.
Now he'll declare that that's a big win for us. We control 94%. He buys himself a little bit of time. Most people don't know what you just said, which is Iran has other options.
So that's going to feel going back to Trump equals optics. It's going to feel like an optical win. The thing that scares me is, I think, to your point, he will end up getting drawn into boots on the ground because, one, he'll have seen, oh, the American people didn't super freak out. Okay, that's great.
We all start going, well, I mean, I guess we already have boots on the ground, so it's not so crazy that we go, like, just try to finish the job real quick. Uh, you know, I, but by doing that, I think that his base implodes, I think he is a guaranteed loss at the midterms. And I think given the political dynamic in the U.S.
where we are so hyperpolarized, that it becomes existential for him in terms of he will go to prison. So, if he loses a midterms, he gets impeached immediately. He then obviously loses power in 2028, which needs to happen, no matter what, given that right now, our Constitution makes very clear, no third term for you. But I think that we would, I mean, look, many, many a thing can happen between now and the 2028 elections, but I would imagine if Trump goes down, the Republican Party loses power.
Democrats get into office. They have already vowed that they're going to go after him legally. So I have a feeling he's going to fight like this is existential. So he's going to start making decisions that would seem rational to anybody else, or irrational to anybody else, will seem rational to him because he absolutely must find a way to victory, better to prolong it, leverage a war to stay in power, et cetera, et cetera.
So walk me through if you think any of that analysis is off base or if I'm missing something, but what do you see if he makes the fateful decision to go after Carg Island? Yeah, no, I agree with your analysis. I think a lot of his thinking is, how does he stay in power? Because we know exactly what's gonna happen if he leaves office.
The Democrats are going to come into power and they're going to go after him and his family. We know this because that's what happened in 20, 20, when, when, remember of the raid in Marolago. Remember all these all this law fare against Trump? Remember that he lost his court case and almost bankrupted him.
Okay? So you can imagine that there's going to be a lot of people who want revenge for what Trump is doing in his Zack 2nd term. So Trump cannot afford to leave office. And so his personal calculus is how do I say in power?
Well, stay in power for the ballot box is, you know, very risky. But, you know, if he starts a war. And this war is at 1st supported by both the Democrats and the Republicans, but then slowly, this war spires out of control, and then there's a lot of unrest around America, in which case he's forced to send a national guard, and then he's forced to call the natural draft in order to protect American interest. in the Middle East, then he can conceivably stand power of, for as long as this war continues.
Last Updated: 2026-09-27