India, March 24 -- "We did Iwo Jima. We can do this. The Marines. My money is always on the Marines. I don't know if you take the island or you blockade the island, but I know this." Lindsey Graham, a senior member of the US senate from President Donald Trump's Republican Party, said this while calling for pointed American action to take Iran's oil hub, Kharg Island.

Graham's recall of the World War 2 battle between the US and Japan is part of growing talk within the American political sphere of using the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), centered around the warship USS Tripoli, to seize and occupy Kharg Island at the northern corner of the Persian Gulf.

But Iwo Jima was not won as easily as Graham seems to suggest.

The island of I...