3 islands help control access to the Strait of Hormuz. They’re in the crosshairs of the Iran war

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The expanding U.S. military campaign against Iran has put three small islands that sit at the confluence of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz in the crosshairs once again.

The islands of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb — which were seized in 1971 by Iran from what would become the United Arab Emirates — have become a garrison for Iran, helping it exert significant control over the strait, through which a fifth of all oil and natural gas passes in peacetime.

U.S. strikes on two of the islands in recent days have renewed speculation about the fate of these small, rocky isles, whose ownership remains disputed.

Three islands sit along the route to the Strait of Hormuz

The land mass of all three islands totals just about 10 square miles (25 square kilometers). But they carry oversized strategic importance given they sit along the deep-water route taken by ships passing between the strait and the Gulf.

The largest, Abu Musa, has a village on it but primarily serves as a base for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has stationed fast boats and missiles — both of which have been used to harass ships in the strait — on the island. It also hosts air defense systems. The same goes for Greater Tunb Island, while the much-smaller Lesser Tunb only has a military presence.

Because of their strategic importance, regional powers have long fought for control of the islands.

Iran, then under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, took the islands by force on Nov. 30, 1971, two days before the formation of the United Arab Emirates. The shah, as America’s top security ally in the region, received little pushback at the time.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran used the islands as a base to target shipping during the “Tanker war” of the 1980s, when the U.S. Navy escorted oil tankers through the region under Iranian fire. Iran used the islands to both monitor the strait and launch vessels to lay mines or openly attack vessels in that conflict.

U.S. estimates suggest Iran attacked over 160 ships in that confrontation. So far in the current war, there have been over 50 attacks targeting vessels and oil rigs, according to the Joint Maritime Information Center, a coalition overseen by the U.S. Navy. That includes some incidents of the U.S. firing on ships it accuses of trying to break its blockade on Iran.

The islands have become US military targets

In recent days as part of the escalation in fighting, the U.S. military launched strikes on both Abu Musa and Greater Tunb islands. Some analysts have speculated that American forces might invade.

“Together they act as a layered denial system to the most critical energy chokepoint in the world,” Isabel Oakeshott, a columnist for The Telegraph who now lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, wrote in the newspaper. She equated Abu Musa to “a fixed aircraft carrier” for Iran.

Taking the islands likely would be possible for the U.S., which has both paratroopers and Marines in the region. However, they likely would be exposed to Iranian attack while there.

“Without prepared, hardened fortifications to provide cover — even with air support from nearby naval assets — force protection would be an enormous challenge,” warned Brandon Carr, an analyst with the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which calls for restraint in American military operations abroad.

“The Marines would come under fire from Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, severely limiting their ability to project power into the strait.”

The dispute over the islands hangs over the conflict

In recent years, the United Arab Emirates successfully lobbied both China and Russia to include language in joint statements about resolving the ownership of the islands through either negotiations or an international court decision.

That infuriated Tehran — but the world largely ignored the dispute.

“What the world called a bilateral territorial dispute was, from the beginning, a strategic claim on a global chokepoint,” wrote Noora Mohamed Al Murry, an Emirati legal scholar, in April.

“Managed ambiguity, in a waterway this consequential, is not a neutral position. It is a choice with a price, and the world is now holding the invoice.”

Oakeshott, the columnist, predicted that the UAE, which hosts U.S. forces and has repeatedly come under Iranian fire in the war, would likely push to get the islands once the conflict ends.

The U.S. campaign may force the issue to a head, some 55 years after the late shah warned the strait could become a “nuisance” for the world.

“It does not take a big boat to carry a bazooka and a few shells,” the shah told The Guardian newspaper in 1971. “But the trouble that it could cause is tremendous.”