US boots on the ground looming darkly over Iran

Wars often begin with confidence in distance — through precision strikes, remote control and minimal personnel exposure.

It is a familiar American instinct, visible from the early days of the Gulf War to the opening phases of the campaign against ISIS. Air power promises disruption without entanglement, but history shows such bombing campaigns rarely deliver resolution.

That pattern is reappearing in the current US confrontation with Iran. Airstrikes have killed political leaders and degraded elements of Tehran’s missile and drone infrastructure, but those strikes have not defeated Iran’s regime.

Iran developed a decentralized strategic posture specifically to withstand such a military campaign. While Trump’s strikes have often been tactically successful — hitting naval and air assets — Iran has so far sustained its ability to launch missile attacks against adversarial neighbors that host US bases and selectively block shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

This is the moment when policymakers in Washington have started asking themselves the question they no doubt had hoped to avoid: If bombing does not achieve regime change, what will?

The answer, already suggested by Donald Trump and seen in recent troop movements, is as old as war itself: boots on the ground. Not necessarily divisions marching on Tehran, at least not yet, but perhaps instead an invasion of Kharg Island, an offshore terminal situated 25 kilometers off Iran’s coast through which 90% of its crude oil exports pass.

The first step down the boots-on-the-ground path is almost always framed as a limited operation or surgical mission. Navy SEALs, Delta Force, Green Berets — such specialized units have long been a seductive middle ground for policymakers and military planners.

They are militarily more flexible and politically more palatable than full-blown conventional deployments. Mission failures, when they occur, can be more easily contained — at least in theory.

But theory has a habit of colliding with ground reality. The shadow of Operation Eagle Claw — the US military mission that catastrophically failed to rescue 53 embassy staff held captive by revolutionary Iran on April 24, 1980 — still lingers darkly in American strategic thinking.

The lesson was not simply about operational risk; it was about political fragility, as the failed operation contributed to President Jimmy Carter’s downfall at the polls. Iran today presents Trump with an even more complex target set. Its nuclear program, a key target of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury, is dispersed, hardened and well-hidden.

A raid to seize enriched uranium would risk a repeat of the multi-staged, fatally flawed Operation Eagle Claw. There are other possible special operation options, including sabotage of key facilities, including on Kharg Island, top commander assassinations and providing material support to underground dissident networks.

If escalation continues, before or after Trump’s vow not to bomb Iranian power plants until at least April 6, the next phase of the war employing troops on the ground will be far harder to contain. Limited territorial operations, particularly along Iran’s coastline, are a plausible next step.

This week’s deployment of Marine Expeditionary Units to the Persian Gulf is not yet a declaration of intent to invade. Rather, it is a signaling of capability while talks are supposedly ongoing behind the scenes. The MEU’s roughly 2,500 troops, amphibious ships and rapid-insertion forces are tools designed for controlled escalation.

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is another possible boots-on-the-ground target. Controlling nearby islands – Qeshm, Kish and Abu Musa – would potentially loosen or even break Iran’s hold on the crucial waterway.

Yet geography cuts both ways; Iran’s coastline is not defenseless. It is layered with radar systems, mobile missile batteries, and naval assets designed for asymmetric warfare. The US would bring superior technology; Iran would benefit from proximity. And war-time supply lines almost always favor the defender.

Even a successful US troops landing would not be a victory. Holding the island territory would be a different exercise entirely. The US learned this painfully in the Iraq War, where rapid victory gave way to prolonged occupation and strategic exhaustion under insurgent fire.

There is little reason to believe Iranian territory would be any easier to hold. Indeed, its terrain is harsher, its population is larger and its political structure is already proving more cohesive under external fire than Iraq’s. A US coastal foothold could quickly become a difficult-to-exit liability.

Decisive invasion illusion

Beyond limited operations lies the option few openly advocate but many quietly analyze: a full-scale invasion. It is often the logical endpoint of escalation for military planners.

The comparison with Iraq is unavoidable yet misleading. If the 2003 invasion of Iraq required roughly 200,000 troops, Iran would demand far more —perhaps multiples of that number.

Logistics alone would be daunting. Regional allies, now under Iranian missile fire, would need to provide secure basing and supply corridors. Political consent will inevitably become more uncertain as the war grinds on. US domestic support, fragile even in the early stages of the conflict, would erode as costs in American lives mounted.

Moreover, a long, grinding war in Iran would inevitably shift American attention away from other regions, such as Europe, where deterrence is weak, and Asia, where competition with China will determine America’s long-term standing and prosperity.

Even in the unlikely event of battlefield success in Iran, the aftermath would be the true test. Regime collapse would not equal stability – Afghanistan and Iraq offer sufficient evidence of that.

Iran’s complex ethnic, political and religious dimensions would complicate any US-led attempt at reconstruction. Victory, in such a scenario, would not end the war. It would begin a different, longer one.

There is a deeper asymmetry at work in this conflict, one that no amount of military planning or boots on the ground can resolve. The US seeks clear, measurable and preferably swift outcomes, as reflected in Trump’s blustery claims that the war is already won.

Iran, on the other hand, seeks survival through endurance — a common strategy when states face a far stronger adversary.

This is why the discussion of ground troops keeps returning, despite the risks and despite the history of failure. The US is already seeing that air power can punish, but it cannot compel Iran to surrender.

The debate in Washington is thus not really about whether boots on the ground are desirable; it is increasingly about whether they become unavoidable.

So far, that’s still uncertain. The critical thresholds — economic shocks, direct attacks on US assets and escalation spirals — have not yet been crossed. But they exist, and they are closer than US policymakers seem willing to admit as the war enters its fourth week.

History shows that American wars often expand beyond their original purposes — what starts as a campaign of pressure gradually morphs into a long-term commitment with American soldiers on the ground.

And once that commitment is made, reversal becomes increasingly difficult and costly.

M A Hossain is a senior journalist and international affairs analyst.