Only the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is capable of the “size, scope, and scale” needed for the type of “amphibious operations” expected in the conflict against Iran’s regime, Jonathan Hackett, a US Marine Corps veteran specializing in counterintelligence, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
The US has been deploying additional marines and warships in the Middle East, according to reports.
The US has dispatched the 31st MEU to the Middle East. It includes about 2,200 marines aboard three US Navy amphibious assault ships, ABC News reported Friday.
The MEU unit is capable of launching specially task-organized units ranging in size up to a 550-man battalion landing team, in addition to providing logistical and aerial support from ship to shore, Hackett said.
“This capability is unique in the military,” he said. “Only the MEU can conduct this type of operation. No other unit in the US military is specifically task-organized to launch ship-to-shore deployments of units of this size, scope, and scale.”
The deployment does not indicate that the marines will be involved in any potential ground combat operations in Iran, but the forces may be positioned to provide additional air, land, and sea assets, ABC News reported.
“The amphibious operations of the MEU are also organized in a way that other major combat elements in the Army, Air Force, and Navy are not,” Hackett said. “The MEU is a self-contained combat force that does not rely on outside support to execute its expeditionary amphibious operations.”
“The way the MEU does this is through something called the Marine Air-Ground Task Force [MAGTF] concept, which is composed of an air combat element, a ground combat element, a logistics element, and several other support components, all contained on the three vessels that comprise the Amphibious Readiness Group that we now see steaming westward from the 7th Fleet area of operations containing Japan to the 5th Fleet area of operations based in Bahrain,” he said.
The 31st MEU, as the largest scale of the MAGTF concept, is able to carry out maritime raid operations, such as seizing and holding gas and oil platforms or infrastructure, Hackett said.
Deployed after Iran closes Strait of Hormuz
Notably, the capabilities are reportedly being deployed after Tehran cut access to the vital Strait of Hormuz, an action that has wreaked havoc on global energy markets. Although some Iranian vessels have continued to pass, the passage has been effectively closed for most of the world’s shipping since the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
US President Donald Trump has threatened more strikes on Iran’s main oil export hub, Kharg Island, despite earlier statements focusing on targeting Iran’s military assets.
The MEU has a very well-developed support system for putting a battle group of marines onto land, but such operations would pull personnel from Asia, “which signals weakness to North Korea and China” and would take days to carry out, military historian Dr. Lynette Nusbacher told the Post.
“The Immediate Response Force is on 18 hours’ notice to move, which means that the US can have them in the air and on the way when the MEU crosses a reporting line on a map that says they’re 18 hours out,” she said, adding that “the rest of the 82nd Airborne Division is on a longer notice to move. But we’ve seen reports that they had their leave canceled a week ago.”
Information is currently limited, but Nusbacher said it was possible “this Marine unit could be on its way to secure landing places for an air-delivered infantry brigade as part of a phased joint operation on Iranian soil.”
Such an operation could be intended to deny regime forces key terrain, which they may have otherwise used to attack vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, she said.
Nusbacher suggested that this could be the start of a “boots on the ground” operation, constituting a major escalation in the conflict that has otherwise depended entirely on air assaults.
A limitation of the US and Israel’s current strategy is that it is next to impossible to bring about regime change from air operations exclusively, experts, including Nusbacher, have previously told the Post.
Asked whether the potential operation could give some indication of the US’s goals in the conflict, she said: “In my view, the US has never had clear goals for this mission.”
“US intentions have varied from supporting protesters [in] overthrowing the regime,” Nusbacher said, adding that such a task with US marines “would require not only ample preparation but also a force of very significant size – a corps or larger – [and] many divisions, much bigger than that MEU.”
“Without a very large-scale mobilization of US forces, including mobilization of reserve and National Guard forces, the US would be unlikely to have enough ‘boots on the ground’ to successfully overthrow the Iranian regime,” she said.
Asked whether the deployment could be a message to the regime, Nusbacher said it was “tantalizing but highly speculative.”
“It’s possible that someone in the US administration is trying to send a message, but I don’t think they operate on that level of subtlety,” she said, adding that such a message would also communicate to China and North Korea that Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan were no longer being watched.
“I have seen some suggestions that a highly technology-enabled virtual occupation of Iran by US and Israeli forces could enable a much smaller force to suppress Iranian regime forces indefinitely while civil society groups established a post-regime order,” Nusbacher said.
“In my assessment, President Trump thought he would have this operation done and dusted, with a new technocratic government in charge,” she said. “But the Iranian regime is largely in place. In particular, Trump thought he would paralyze Iranian command and control in ways that would make it impossible for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Whatever aims the US had at the beginning of the war – regime change, destroying the Iranian armed forces for a decade – now they have one mission remaining: opening the Strait of Hormuz,” Nusbacher said.
Jerusalem Post Staff, Reuters, and Goldie Katz contributed to this report.