i'm not fully understanding the strategery involved in trying to take kharg island

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putting aside how stupid the war is in the first place and so on, i just want to understand this from a purely militaristic point of view.

i understand from wiki that 90% of iran's oil has gone through kharg island, it has deep waters around it and can load up 10 supertankers at once. sounds like a huge operation.

however, that was then, this is now. iran has mined the straits of hormuz, and kharg island is up in the persian gulf, where tankers need to go through the straits to get out to the rest of the world. with the straits mined, they can only trade with other nations on the persian gulf -- iraq, kuwait, saudi arabia, bahrain, qatar, and uae. what would the plan be? sell oil to saudi arabia, who then transports it all the way to the other side and onto a tanker in the red sea? which then has to pass through the straits of bab-el-mandeb, where the houthis in yemen can attack them?

seems to me the iran, as part of the decision to mine the straits of hormuz, decided they would get their oil out by way of the gulf of oman, so they don't have to go through the straits.

in other words, while kharg island may have been very valuable economically and strategically prior to the mining of the straits of hormuz, it is now far, far less valuable to iran, and basically worthless to the u.s. -- i mean, what are we going to do with it? iran certainly isn't going to send any more oil there, in fact they're surely in the process of pulling back all the oil stored there so it's safer on the mainland.


am i missing something? we can't get naval support in there because of the mined straits, so i guess we airlift all the troops and cargo. sounds like a good way to get a lot of our troops killed. i have no doubt we'd be able to take the island, but at what cost, and then what? we'd be constantly under attack by cheap drones and such, all to control an island that iran mostly isn't using anymore, certainly not to the extent it was prior to the war.

i guess kharg island has value to iran in that after the war, they could sweep the mines and clear the straits and resume operations. so if the idea is to permanently hold the island, or use it as a negotiating weapon, maybe that has some value. but again, iran has surely already made plans to have an oil industry without that island as part of the decision to mine the straits, so i don't know how big of a negotiating point this is.

what am i missing?