The US military deployed elements of the elite 82nd airborne division – paratroopers – to the Middle East in March. Sources have now revealed some went to Israel. Their mission, if called upon, was to seize Iranian oil port Kharg island.
US journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on 8 June:
When the Pentagon announced that the 82nd Airborne was deploying to the Middle East in March, it concealed a key detail: some of the paratroopers were headed to Israel, as revealed in an Army deployment order I obtained.
Adding:
A military source involved in war planning tells me the deployment is tied to new U.S.-Israeli joint contingency plans, completed since February, for seizing Kharg Island and carving out coastal territory inside Iran.
Rumours of a ground invasion bubbled then faded as the war ground to a humiliating halt. Klippenstein, among others, argued that a ground war was never going to happen. Trump’s war on Iran is currently polling as badly as the Vietnam war.
US paratroopers Israeli mission kept secret
The mission was kept quiet to head off:
public debate over a joint U.S.-Israeli operation inside Iran — a prospect many considered plausible at the time.
A joint U.S.-Israeli operation raises thorny questions for America’s Gulf Arab “partners,” especially over logistical support — hence the 82nd, which could launch directly from Israel without any Gulf state’s consent to use its territory.
The last mass military parachute drop was in 1945. While the Pentagon did talk about the deployment, the Israel tasking was kept quiet.
US Joint Chiefs Chairman general Dan Caine praised the 82nd in a public meeting in May 2026:
He went on to describe the paratroopers as “constantly ready to jump from Air Force aircraft into ground combat [to] seize key terrain if ordered to do so, just like their predecessors did in Sicily and Normandy in World War II, or to secure or enable the follow-on forces to flow into theater as they did in Grenada or Panama.”
That is a description of readiness to seize a piece of Iranian terrain — which makes me suspect the New York Times and others were being used to “message” Tehran that such an operation was imminent.
One company remains Israel
The US-Israeli alliance is hardly a secret. Klippenstein gave three reasons why the mission was kept so secret:
First, the breadth and depth of U.S.-Israeli military cooperation goes far beyond arms sales and “deconfliction.”
the two countries are deepening intelligence sharing aimed at making Israel a sixth “eye” in the so-called Five Eyes alliance of the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.
And:
Third, naming Israel would expose how much of the U.S. assault on Iran is in fact a joint U.S.-Israeli attack — not a Trump-Netanyahu brotherhood, but cooperation at the military-to-military working level, where combined war plans are now reality.
Klippenstein said one airborne company – between 60 and 250 soldiers – is still in Israel:
from which no dispatches have emerged in two months. I’m not saying a ground operation is imminent or inevitable. But if one were coming, wouldn’t it be nice to know?
US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offeringunprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has sincestated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there isno evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
The US has achieved none of its original war aims. Iran predictably closed the Straits of Hormuz, a vital oil channel, once attacked – creating a global energy crisis. Far from being defeated, Iran has said the war will continue until “the enemy’s inevitable and permanent humiliation, disgrace, regret, and surrender”. Trump came to power on an anti-war ‘America First’ ticket. He now faces worldwide humiliation.
Featured image via Getty/Ian Hitchcock
By Joe Glenton
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