Sure they could use those three islands short term but to think that the UAE and the Saudi's themselves wouldnt move in to erase the threat is wild. We saw the Houthi's try this and I mean it ended up reaching a point of not being much of a factor. You get the Middle East supporting and ya know.... not great.

Even if we are to take at face value the perception that there's no backroom deal in place between Iran and the US already, and that this is now completely out of control with what comes next left to the whims of chance, the timing of it was chosen for reasons we're not clued in too.

Asking nothing more than "why now?" puts a whole different lens on it.

I'm not convinced that actually happened, traffic pictures can be improperly source and don't represent lots of facts on the ground. Trump tweeted it, but we don't know exactly who that message was to and what it meant. I highly doubt a meaningful number of Persians bugged out because of it specifically.

Special Ops are another reason why you may want to have the local population thin out a bit too, we won't hear about those.