5,000 Marines and Six Warships Are Now Headed for the Gulf. Ship Captains Waiting at Hormuz Still Haven't Heard a Plan.
The USS Boxer amphibious group left San Diego today with 2,500 Marines, doubling the ground forces deploying to the theater. Experts say reopening Hormuz may require seizing Iranian coastline.
The Story
The Pentagon confirmed Friday that the USS Boxer and two accompanying amphibious warships, the USS Portland and USS Comstock, have departed San Diego carrying roughly 2,500 Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The 11th MEU is a Camp Pendleton-based air-and-ground attack force that specializes in rapid response and amphibious assault. The same unit type helped put Marines ashore during the 2003 Iraq invasion.
This is the second such deployment in a week. The Japan-based USS Tripoli, along with the USS New Orleans and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (another 2,500 Marines), was ordered to the Middle East last week and was spotted sailing west of Malaysia on satellite imagery earlier this week. Combined, the two deployments add approximately 5,000 Marines and thousands of sailors to the region, joining a U.S. force posture that already exceeds 50,000 troops across multiple bases and naval positions in the theater. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group is operating in the Arabian Sea.
The deployment signals that the administration is preparing for operations that go beyond air and missile strikes. MEUs are built for exactly the kind of missions being discussed: amphibious assault, coastal seizure, and rapid crisis response. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the Pentagon is focused on finding ways to broadly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and that options include using ground forces to take over Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf. President Trump described opening the strait as “a simple military maneuver” while acknowledging “you need ships, you need volume.”
Military and shipping experts are far less optimistic. Five experts told MS NOW that reopening Hormuz by force would likely require U.S. ground troops in “a dangerous, costly operation that could drag on for years.” Retired Army General James “Spider” Marks said Marines would be needed to “create a buffer zone on the ground if it’s determined that air strikes do not sufficiently decrease Iran’s ability to fire onto traffic transiting the straits.” Jason Campbell, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, predicted Iranian forces would fire drones and missiles at transiting ships from mountainous positions along the coastline and from deeper inside the country. “They have been planning for this for decades,” Campbell said. “Iran is masterful at asymmetric warfare.”
Why It Matters
For tanker owners and charterers with vessels stranded near Hormuz, the Marine deployment answers one question and raises a bigger one.
