MORE than one million Iranian soldiers have been primed for action should Donald Trump launch a full-scale land invasion, according to a military source in Tehran.
The US President is said to be increasingly convinced that a ground operation is the most effective way to pressure Iran into accepting Washington‘s 15-point peace plan.
The Pentagon is now weighing sending 10,000 more troops, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Thousands of battle-ready US Marines have already been dispatched to the Middle East and could be poised to capture the strategic Kharg Island.
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The powerful amphibious force of around 2,200 Marines aboard the USS Tripoli and USS New Orleans is set to enter the region on Friday,
But a source within the reeling regime claimed that Iranian youths are lining up in their droves to enlist in the bloodthirsty Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to defend the island.
“The US wants to open the Strait of Hormuz with suicide and self-destructive tactics; that’s fine,” the source told Iranian state TV.
“We are ready for both their suicide strategy to be executed and for the Strait to remain closed.”
An official from a mediating country warned that while the US may be able to seize Kharg Island, it would likely spark weeks of fierce fighting and extend the war beyond Washington’s four-to-six week window.
They added that the rogue state is unlikely to capitulate, even under invasion, and insisted that Tehran is unwilling to accept terms it had already refused before the conflict.
It comes as Trump once again delayed plans to obliterate Iranian power plants in a bid to secure a deal to end the brutal conflict.
Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum for Tehran’s mullahs to reopen the vital strait on Monday, before dramatically calling it off until the weekend.
That deadline has now been pushed to April 6.
But the president has warned that Iran “better get serious” about agreeing a peace deal “before it is too late”.
Trump said today that Iran‘s negotiators were “very different and strange”, calling out the disparity between the rogue nation’s backchannel talks and what it says to the world.
Iran’s military has flatly denied that peace talks were taking place at all and claimed the US was talking to itself.
Iranian state media then said it had rejected Trump’s 15-point peace plan entirely, branding it “excessive”, before presenting an alternative set of demands.
The US president fired back, saying: “They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback.”
It comes as Iran threatened to unleash Houthi bloodhounds on a second major trade route leading to the Suez Canal and cripple the world economy yesterday.
The reeling regime has maintained its iron grip on the Strait of Hormuz, peppering the vital 24-mile waterway with deadly naval mines, paralysing international trade and sending fuel costs sky-high.
Iran’s mullahs have promised to turn up the heat by shutting off the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a critical chokepoint to trade between Europe and Asia.
The strait serves over a tenth of global seaborne trade and – given that 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply has already been cut off via the Strait of Hormuz – could spell disaster for international commerce.
A blockade would effectively mean that nearly half of all maritime trade would be at the whim of the sadistic IRGC.
Israel took steps towards freeing the Persian Gulf by killing the Iranian naval chief orchestrating the chokehold.
Alireza Tangsiri, 64, a key figure in maintaining control over the Strait of Hormuz, died in an airstrike at a nearby port city.
The chief’s stranglehold has sent global energy prices soaring – as the Strait of Hormuz is a passage for one-fifth of global oil exports.
Having been appointed head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Navy in 2018 – Tangsiri had ramped up action in Iran’s waters over the last month.
Just last week, he threatened: “Oil facilities associated with America are now on par with American bases and will come under fire with full force.”