Inside Qeshm, Iran’s underground missile fortress and geological marvel
What happened
Qeshm Island covers approximately 1,445 square kilometers and is located 22 kilometers south of Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz. The island has a population of 148,000 residents, primarily Sunni Muslims speaking the Bandari dialect. On March 7, 2026, US air strikes targeted a desalination plant on the island, cutting fresh water supplies to 30 surrounding villages. In response, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched strikes against US forces at Juffair base in Bahrain.
The island has been designated a Free Trade-Industrial Zone since 1989 and houses Iran's underground "missile cities" designed to control the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping traffic through the strait was halted when Iran threatened to strike passing ships, with only limited vessels now permitted through as countries negotiate with Iran and the US attempts to assemble a naval convoy.
Historically, Qeshm was known as Oaracta by Greek explorer Nearchus, Abarkawan by 9th-century Islamic geographers, and Jazira-al-Ṭawila in Arabic. The rulers of Hormuz relocated their court there in 1301. The Portuguese built a fort in 1621, which was expelled by combined Persian and English forces in 1622, killing British Arctic navigator William Baffin. The British established a naval base at Basidu in the 19th century, abandoned in 1935 at the request of Reza Shah Pahlavi. The island was designated a UNESCO Geopark in 2006 and contains the Hara Mangrove Forest.
Who's perspective
This article is published by Al Jazeera English, a Qatari state-funded outlet, and is written from a perspective that centers Iranian strategic logic and frames the conflict primarily through the lens of Iranian defensive capability and historical sovereignty. In this specific piece, the author consistently contextualizes Iranian military assets as responses to external pressure rather than examining them as independent threats, which shapes what details are foregrounded.
Taken for granted
The article treats the existence of an active 'US-Israel war on Iran' as an established fact rather than a contested characterization of events, using that framing as the baseline for the entire piece. This forecloses the alternative framing — that the situation might be described differently by other parties, for example as a targeted military campaign, a deterrence operation, or an escalation with disputed origins — without acknowledging that the label itself is disputed.
Language choicestap to explore
AI-identified observations — verify against the original article.