Boots on the ground?

The USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship carrying 3,500 American troops, arrived in the Middle East on FridayImage: US CENTCOM/Handout/Anadolu/picture alliance

Boots on the ground? This is the existential question because if this happens, it's over. The kill zone is just the beginning as a small coltinngent of 7000 troops vs a massed array of drones, missiles and mines, not to mention Iranian soldiers equipped to the max with serious ordinance reminds one of the Dardanelles disaster in WW I, aka Gallipoli, where Churchill did the ultimate blunder and hundreds of thousands of soldiers died or were injured doing a op just as foolhardy as this one if said incursion actually happens.

Churchill 1914

The Battle of Gallipoli became a slaughter and quickly morphed into a stalemate just as bloody, just as pointless as that on the Western Front. In the first month after storming the peninsula, the Allies lost 45,000 men. The ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign lasted nine months before the evacuation of the last Allied troops in January 1916. Each side sustained 250,000 casualties with 46,000 Allied troops and 65,000 Turkish troops dead.

The invasion had been scuttled by incompetence and hesitancy by military commanders, but, fairly or unfairly, Churchill was the scapegoat. The Gallipoli disaster threw the government into crisis, and the Liberal prime minister was forced to bring the opposition Conservatives into a coalition government. As part of their agreement to share power, the Conservatives wanted Churchill, a renegade politician who had bolted their party a decade earlier, out from the Admiralty. In May 1915, Churchill was demoted to an obscure cabinet post.

The battle

Map of the Gallipoli peninsula, 1915

Gallipoli campaign

Fought during the First World War (1914-18) from 25 April 1915 to 9 January 1916, Gallipoli was the first major amphibious operation in modern warfare. British Empire and French troops landed on the Ottoman-held peninsula in the Dardanelles Straits with disastrous consequences for the Allies.

The Allies suffered over 220,000 casualties out of a force of nearly 500,000. From their point of view, the campaign was a disaster.

The Turks suffered almost as many casualties, but their victory at Gallipoli rejuvenated the Ottoman war effort. Further success followed at Kut in Mesopotamia (1916) and there was a renewed deployment into Sinai.

Most of the withdrawn Allied troops re-grouped in Egypt where they provided much-needed reinforcements for the Sinai and Palestine campaign.

LoudHmen - This image was made from the following source images (listed at their sources as "public domain" or "not restricted"): Top: Australian War Memorial image P01141.001 Middle left: File:British and French Battle Fleet at the entrance to the Dardanelles.jpg Middle right: File:V Beach Helles Gallipoli.jpg Bottom left: Australian War Memorial image A02598 Bottom right: Australian War Memorial image G00544

Now think of Trump, Pentagon Pete and 7000 soldiers possibly being deployed on Kharg Island.

Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow, has been a major target.
Photograph: EU Copernicus Sentinel-2/EPA

I thought so.