Several scenarios have emerged surrounding a potential American ground operation in Iran, ranging from the relatively limited capture of the strategically located Kharg Island to more ambitious efforts to deploy American personnel on Iranian territory.
However, in any of these cases, analysts and former officials consulted by Newsweek warn of anticipated reprisals and resistance from Iranian forces, who appear prepared to escalate the costs of such an operation.
"Iran is thinking that it can simply endure and continue to make this difficult all the way to the end and prolong things over time to force us to make decisions we do not want, such as sending troops on the ground," said Joseph Votel, a retired four-star general of the army who served as commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and is now a member of the Middle East Institute.
All signs indicate that any ground operation would be lengthy and very resource-intensive, the general emphasized.
The publication reviews the options for a ground invasion in Iran and the challenges posed by each.
The Battle for Kharg Island
Among the operations under discussion, the idea of seizing Kharg Island has garnered increased attention, both due to Trump's previous comments and its central role in facilitating Iran's energy exports and attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz to all other maritime traffic.
Trump ordered American attacks on Kharg Island last week, claiming to have destroyed up to 90 military targets, including naval mining installations and missile storage bunkers, while "sparing" oil facilities. Despite being just 24 km from the Iranian coast, the island may prove impossible to defend for Iranian forces.
Votel sees "advantages" but also "disadvantages" in capturing the island, a mission that would fall to one of the Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) currently heading to the region.
"The key element in all of this is that not only do we have to send troops to that location, but we have to protect them," Votel said. "So, we have to provide air cover. So, we have to have some sort of lifeline with supplies and other things, and then we have to allocate resources to prevent Iran from attacking them."
Considerable attention has been given to the option of mobilizing a landing force to assault the island, although this approach could leave American forces exposed to Iranian fire from the island or the mainland.
Ben Connable, a retired intelligence officer and Middle East reserve officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, stated that a landing would be "too risky." Instead, American forces would likely attack by air: "V-22 aircraft can easily reach Kharg from various locations."
"Given the size of the island and American firepower superiority, I can envision a single infantry battalion that could occupy and hold that terrain. The biggest threat they would face would be Iranian missile attacks," Connable said. "Setting aside important questions about our war strategy, the Marines could conduct this operation with a high likelihood of success."
Once ashore, American forces would be within range of Iranian missiles and drones with even shorter action radii.
And a victory on Kharg Island would not be enough to influence the calculations of the Iranian government, which has signaled a lack of interest in de-escalation.
"I think it's a little easier, because it's an island, so once you conquer it, it's easier to defend. You're not in the middle of Iranian territory, so you would use that to try to apply pressure on the Iranians, practically as a leverage effect. But I'm very skeptical that it would work, because the Iranians have truly shown that they are willing to endure a lot of suffering," said Ilan Goldenberg, former head of the Iran team at the Pentagon.
Conquering the Strait of Hormuz
To truly secure a presence on Kharg Island and also limit Iran's ability to attack the Strait of Hormuz, another scenario requires deploying an American presence along Iran's southern coast.
But then, Goldenberg emphasized, "you have to keep it, and the Iranians will send troops, and you'll have to maintain a lot of air forces (…)".
The scale of such an operation would likely necessitate Americans taking control of other islands and cities, including the major Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. And that's before an extensive operation required for clearing the waters of the Strait of Hormuz of mines.
"Even with that ground control, the strait would need to be cleared of mines and protected from anti-ship cruise missiles, which could have a range of several hundred kilometers. And I think we just removed our last mine draggers," Connable said.
“With the threats posed by both missiles and drones, as well as internal resistance, they should also take into account, especially since the city of Bandar Abbas is home to over half a million residents,”
"If we send troops to the Iranian coast, then we must be prepared for missiles, drones, asymmetric counter-invasion operations by the Basij (Iran's volunteer police force), such as improvised explosive devices, mines, small rockets, and ambush crews, etc."
In addition to paramilitary and guerrilla units, insurgents associated with Iran's two military forces, the Artesh and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), should also be considered.
"I thought we bombed every enemy corner in all recent wars, only to find that they can still gather combat units and counterattack. In the Gulf War of 1991, the 5th Mech Division of Iraq counterattacked after a month of non-stop bombing. And at al-Faw in Iraq in 2003, at least one battalion of Iraqi armored units counterattacked the British landing force," Connable said.
The Nuclear Option
The White House would also consider a limited operation aimed at securing and extracting highly enriched uranium that remained in the rubble of the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center after U.S. airstrikes in June. However, the risks are significantly higher when targeting a central point on Iran's map, which likely already faces defensive measures, experts say.
"This is a very large, very risky operation. You would need to send many ground forces because Isfahan is hundreds of kilometers inside Iran. We're talking about descending on a nuclear facility, one of the main areas where the Iranians probably expect you to come," Goldenberg said.
Unlike previous raids by Special Operations forces that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, or the more recent raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife at their residence in Caracas in January, an incursion at the Isfahan nuclear site would not allow American forces to "just go in for an hour and then leave."
"You have to get this very delicate material out, and that means you will be on the ground for a long time, which means the Iranians have time to then send forces from all over the country to that location from different directions," Goldenberg said. "So, you have to establish a fairly large perimeter around the nuclear site and be able to fight against a major force coming in."
Votel also argued that such an action would require a "special operations force on the ground focused on recovery," as well as "a fairly large force to facilitate this," diverting precious resources to provide air support and surveillance to protect the inserted troops and, ultimately, to extract them. "It probably wouldn't be an operation that would be done in a day or two, but it would probably take a much, much longer period of time," the general said.
The Terrain Protects Iran
Considering this option and others related to penetrating Iranian territory, there are also geographical constraints that raise issues about the chances of success of an incursion into hostile territory in wartime conditions. This is without taking into account unknown factors, such as the permission of Arab Gulf states for American military access.
"The big limitation I see, really, in any of these options is that Iran's geography is not favorable to invasion, and this has been an element of Iran's internal defense for millennia and from ancient times," said Carlton Haelig, a member of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security.
"You can get relatively far into Iranian territory," Haelig said, "but then you run into several very high and very rugged mountain ranges that you simply can't traverse with large, mechanized forces in the heart of the country."
And with the attempt to penetrate so deep into Iran's territory, such as Isfahan, he warned that "the operational insertion range presents significant uncertainty regarding success."
"And then, how do you get that material out?" Haelig added. "It's much easier to insert special operations forces than it is for them to safely remove the material you would try to take out of the country."
Iran is ready for any ground war with America
"Iran is ready for any ground war with America. Entering into a ground war with Iran would mean stepping into a quagmire for the Americans; they would lose," said Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi, a professor at Yasouj University in Tehran, to Newsweek.
"Approximately half of the Iranian population has access to weapons due to its rural lifestyle," Dolatabadi said. "All these people could easily become soldiers to defend their homeland. The Iranian armed forces have also prepared for any ground war using mosaic warfare tactics, which they have practiced many times. Iranians are skilled in guerrilla warfare and are capable of resisting any attack."
"The eternal war," the price of total invasion
An even less likely option for experts would be the prospect of the Trump administration attempting to follow the most traditional path of waging war - a large-scale invasion.
"I think it's important to say that Iran is larger than the state of Alaska. So it's huge. It's very large," said Votel. "And the variations in terrain are roughly the same in terms of rugged terrain and open areas (...). And so, it would quickly consume a lot of troops, and then bringing them there would be a challenge, maintaining them would be another challenge, not just logistically, but also with fire support and everything you need (...)"
A much stronger American military could very well prevail over the Iranian forces in conventional warfare. However, what follows could be exactly the kind of "eternal war," with complexities and challenges greater than those experienced in Iraq, and against which Trump has expressed revulsion.
"(Iran) is a country with 90 million inhabitants. Iraq had 23 million. So we're talking about a country that is practically four times larger in population. Try to think of it as a counterinsurgency campaign," said Goldenberg.
Approximately 200,000 soldiers were deployed at the peak of the American campaign in Iraq and "it was never enough to completely quell the insurgency," which then erupted with even greater force to give way to the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group shortly after the US withdrawal in 2011, drawing American troops back until 2014, Goldenberg recalls.
In Iran, he mentioned, "we would be talking about hundreds of thousands of soldiers in an occupation scenario, with a very proud people and a regime that still has enough support."
"If 20% of public opinion supports the regime, it's enough to cause you a huge nightmare," Goldenberg said. "I don't think it's viable militarily, unless you want to wage this war for the next 20 years," he emphasized.
T.D.