Beneath Qeshm Island’s mazes of salt caves and stretches of emerald mangroves in the Strait of Hormuz lies a very different kind of architecture. Once a magnet for tourists drawn to its surreal rock formations, the island is now receiving global attention for what is concealed under its coral: extensive subterranean military facilities described as “underground missile cities.”
As the US‑Israel war on Iran escalated, Qeshm has shifted from a free‑trade and tourist hub into a frontline stronghold—and a strategic prize for US Marines being deployed to the strait. At about 1,445 sq km (558 sq miles), the island can physically dominate the strait’s entrance from the Gulf, effectively acting as a cork in a vital energy transit route.
Qeshm’s roughly 148,000 residents—mostly Sunni Muslims speaking the local Bandari dialect—live where ancient natural beauty meets modern military tension. Many livelihoods still revolve around the sea; fishermen observe Nowruz Sayyadi, the Fisherman’s New Year, when all fishing halts to honor the ocean’s bounty. But civilian life was disrupted early in the conflict: on March 7, one week into the war, US air strikes hit a desalination plant on the island, cutting freshwater supplies to some 30 nearby villages. Tehran called the strike a “flagrant crime” against civilians. In retaliation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck US forces at Bahrain’s Juffair base, saying the assault on Qeshm had been launched from a neighbouring Gulf state.
The island’s modern façade—shaped in part by its free trade‑industrial zone status since 1989—masks its role as what analysts call Iran’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Lying about 22 km (14 miles) south of Bandar Abbas, Qeshm dominates the Clarence (Kuran) Strait and serves as a primary platform for Iran’s asymmetric naval capabilities. Exact numbers of fast‑attack boats and coastal batteries housed in its underground networks are classified, but their purpose is clear: to control or, if Tehran chooses, close the Strait of Hormuz.
Retired Lebanese Brigadier‑General Hassan Jouni told Al Jazeera that Qeshm contains “striking Iranian capabilities” within an underground “missile city” designed to exert control over the waterway. The threat has had immediate effect: shipping through the strait was effectively halted when Iran warned it would strike vessels attempting to pass. Currently, only a handful of ships carrying crucial oil and gas supplies are being allowed through, as nations negotiate for safe passage and the administration of United States President Donald Trump seeks to assemble a naval convoy of warships to force the route open.
Qeshm’s strategic significance is layered onto a long history. The island—known in Arabic as Jazira‑al‑Ṭawila (“the Long Island”)—has borne many names. Greek explorer Nearchus called it Oaracta and linked it to the legendary tomb of Erythras. By the ninth century, Islamic geographers knew it as Abarkawan; later folk etymology rendered that as Jazira‑ye Gavan, or “Cow Island.” Its importance was such that Hormuz rulers moved their court there in 1301 to escape Tartar attacks. For centuries Qeshm served as the region’s “water barrel,” supplying drinking water to the arid Kingdom of Hormuz across the Gulf.
The island’s riches attracted repeated raids. In 1552 Ottoman commander Piri Reis attacked Qeshm and seized what accounts called “the richest prize that could be found in all the world.” Colonial powers left their marks too: the Portuguese built a stone fort in 1621, only to be expelled a year later by a Persian‑English force in a battle that killed British navigator William Baffin. By the 19th century the British maintained a naval base at Basidu (Bassadore) until 1863; a coaling station remained until 1935 when Reza Shah Pahlavi requested its removal.
Despite the military cloud, Qeshm remains one of the Middle East’s most ecologically diverse places. It is home to the Hara mangrove forest, an essential breeding ground for migratory birds, and to Qeshm Geopark—the region’s first UNESCO‑recognized geopark, inscribed in 2006. The island’s geological attractions include the Valley of Stars, a labyrinth of canyons and pillars carved by millennia of erosion and steeped in local legend; the Namakdan Salt Cave, one of the world’s longest salt caves stretching more than 6 km (3.7 miles) with crystalline formations hundreds of millions of years old; and Chahkooh Canyon, a deep, narrow limestone and salt corridor whose vertical walls form a natural stone cathedral.
Qeshm also contains ancient human engineering: the Tala (Gold) Wells in Laft village number 366—the number of days in a leap year—and were dug roughly 2,000 years ago; about 100 still function and historically supplied drinking water across the island.
Today, the island’s salt caverns, shrines and mangrove forests sit in uneasy coexistence with hidden military infrastructure. Past empires and naval coalitions—Portuguese, British and others—have come and gone, but Qeshm’s geological position continues to anchor the region’s strategic calculations as the war reshapes life and navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.
