A network of tunnels off Iran’s coast houses a “mighty arsenal of rockets, bunkers, and huge air-raid shelters” to defend Iran – and “ignorant” Donald Trump isn’t taking them seriously.
Qeshm Island stretches 558sq miles over the entrance to the Straight of Hormuz. Once a tourist hotspot of verdant mangroves and the world’s most impressive salt-caves, Qeshm is now a fortress, or “missile city” that is the epicentre of the burgeoning global economic crisis and World War Three.
Retired Lebanese Brigadier-General Hassan Jouni, a military and strategic expert, told Al Jazeera that Qeshm houses a “missile city” with a host of “striking Iranian capabilities”. The underground networks are there to control the Strait of Hormuz. What exactly is inside the tunnels remains a mystery.
Security expert, Professor Anthony Glees told The Daily Star: “There is no reason at all to doubt that Iran has turned centuries old salt mines and caves on the Island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz into a mighty arsenal of rockets bunkers and huge air-raid shelters to protect Iran’s missiles and drones and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG) in the event of a US boots on the ground attempt to unlock the Strait.”
View 4 ImagesGlees takes issue with Trump and Hegseth’s presentation of the US war effort
Glees highlighted the similarities to Hamas’ tunnels beneath Gaza. He said: “That Iran, Hamas’s paymasters, might have learnt from them about the importance of tunnel warfare seems to have escaped the US military planners as they devised their ill-thought scheme to destroy the regime of the ayatollahs and IRGC.”
As Trump promises a “very good chance” of reaching a deal with Tehran, explosions were heard on Tuesday. Local media claimed the noise was the sound of neutralising unexploded enemy ammunition, as per The Times of Israel.
On March 7, US airstrikes targeted a critical desalination plant on the island. Tehran called the strike a “flagrant crime” against civilians, as it cut off freshwater supplies to 30 surrounding villages. Glees said that Iran’s resources, such as Qeshm, cast doubt on Trump’s narrative of winning this war.
Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, told a Pentagon briefing in March that the US was “decimating” Iran. Trump has repeated this. In April, Hegseth said: “Operation Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come.”
View 4 ImagesThe IRGC released map showing the area of the Hormuz strait it says Iran controls
Glees said decimated might not mean what we thing it does. He told the Daily Star: “By ‘decimated’, ignorant Trump meant ‘obliterated’. But ‘decimated’ actually means ‘one tenth’, which is more or less accurate. About 90% of what Iran has to throw at American forces should they decide to try to take the Strait by force remains intact, and useable.
“Iran still has 30 out of 33 missile firing sites along the Strait of Hormuz, fully functioning. What’s more, 75 per cent of its mobile launchers are in good order and 90 per cent of its underground missile stocks undamaged.
“The broad context here is Iran has not lost the war that Trump and Netanyahu started, and one which neither of them is actually winning.
View 4 ImagesQeshm Island was once a tourist hotspot(Image: AP)
“Whilst Trump claims all he wants from the war is that there should be ‘NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR IRAN’ he’s also told us that he’d obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities last June in Operation Midnight Hammer. Both these things can’t be true.
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“Trump and Netanyahu have managed to get themselves and most of the rest of the world, including China, into a desperately perilous situation. It’s like we’re locked into a safe for which only Iran holds the combination that could extricate ourselves, and out of which Iran – so far – is not ready to free us.”