The U.S. military missile consumption rate shocks the Pentagon; is the operation to seize Harker Island equivalent to "suicide"?

Ask AI · How does the missile consumption rate of the U.S. military raise concern at the Pentagon?

China News Service, March 31 (Zheng Yuntian) According to information recently cited by U.S. media from people familiar with the matter, during the four-week war with Iran, the U.S. military has launched more than 850 “Tomahawk” cruise missiles. The consumption rate of these precision-guided weapons has left some Pentagon officials profoundly shocked. However, the United States’ “grand military plan” toward Iran is likely to further accelerate the depletion of U.S. weapon stockpiles and increase the risk of personnel casualties.

Source image: Around 9 p.m. local time on March 1, Iran’s capital Tehran was hit in multiple locations. Explosions and bursts of fire continued without letup, and thick smoke rose from some buildings.

According to a report by CNN (Cable News Network), the U.S. government news network, outside observers widely speculate that the U.S. military may attempt to take over Iran’s main oil terminal in the Persian Gulf—Khark Island. Taking control of the island would cut off an important economic lifeline for Iran, and the U.S. move aims to prevent Iran from obtaining the necessary funds via oil exports.

Two U.S. military officials said that hundreds of members of the U.S. special operations forces have arrived in the Middle East to join several thousand Marines and Army paratroopers. These special operations personnel include members of the U.S. Army Rangers and the U.S. Navy SEALs, and they have not yet been assigned specific missions. It is understood that the total number of U.S. troops currently stationed in the Middle East has exceeded 50k, an increase of about 10k compared with normal levels.

However, some military experts directly said that, on the military level, this U.S. action is no different from a “suicide-like adventure.”

The Washington Post reported that a former senior defense official familiar with the U.S. military’s ground combat plans in Iran said: “The United States must protect the people on the island—that’s the hard part. Seizing the island isn’t difficult; what’s difficult is how to protect the people on the island.”

Michael Eisenstadt, Director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that such an operation carries extremely high risks.

Eisenstadt is a retired U.S. military officer who served in Iraq, Israel, and Jordan. He said bluntly, “I absolutely don’t want to be in that kind of small place (Khark Island) where Iran has the ability to hit with drones, or even artillery.”

At present, in order to strike Iran’s military facilities, U.S. munitions have already been consumed at a huge scale. If munitions are needed to provide cover for ground combat forces, the amount of munitions consumed would increase dramatically. Potential major personnel casualties are also the pressure the United States must face.

The remarks of Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina who has long supported the U.S. government’s actions against Iran, sound extremely “ominous.” He drew a comparison between the capture of Khark Island and the U.S. military’s campaign to capture the Pacific island of Iwo Jima during World War II: “We won the battle of Iwo Jima, and we can also win this battle. I will always back the Marines.” And in the Iwo Jima campaign, about 6,800 U.S. personnel were killed in action, a price that was extremely heavy.

According to reports by U.S. media, many American allies are complaining that the Trump administration has imposed enormous political pressure on them, demanding that they increase defense budgets and buy U.S. weapons. Yet in their own war, the United States has quickly consumed those weapons.

A senior official in Eastern Europe said, “The U.S. says one thing and does another, which is very frustrating. Everyone now knows that the U.S. will put the interests of Israel and the Western Hemisphere above Europe.”

The predicament of the United States’ tight squeeze on military equipment is not only embarrassing, but also leaves allies full of complaints, calling it a deception. And all of this is precisely the result of the United States bringing it on itself—only by fanning flames around the world and continuously stirring up conflicts can it end up in the situation of being unable to manage the situation and being stuck between options.

(“International Desk” column)