The war in Iran has dragged on for greater than a month, with no clear resolution in sight as additional U.S. troops are headed to the region.
1000’s of soldiers from the U.S. Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division have began arriving within the Middle East, Reuters reported on Monday, as U.S. President Donald Trump weighs his next steps within the war against Iran.
The paratroopers, based out of Fort Bragg, N.C., add to the hundreds of additional sailors, Marines and Special Operations forces sent to the region. Over the weekend, about 2,500 Marines arrived within the Middle East.
This comes because the Wall Street Journal is reporting Trump is mulling a further 10,000 troops within the region and the Washington Post said the Pentagon is preparing for “weeks of ground operations in Iran.”
Nonetheless, some experts are warning that a sustained ground invasion of Iran could be a tall order, even for the U.S. military.
“For context, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw around 150,000 coalition forces through the initial invasion. The US doesn’t have that in theatre in the meanwhile,” said Alexander Salt, senior researcher and managing editor on the Canadian Global Affairs Institute based in Ottawa.
While the success of the U.S. military operation in Venezuela can have emboldened Trump, the difference between Iran and Venezuela’s military capabilities is like “night and day,” Salt added.
“The Iranian military is definitely more able to striking back at U.S. forces than the Venezuelans ever were,” he added.
For one, Iran has certainly one of the biggest militaries on the earth.
How big is Iran’s military?
In keeping with some estimates, Iran had 570,000 active-duty troops as of 2023 and 350,000 reserve troops, bringing the full to slightly below 1,000,000 pairs of shoes. That is in additional to paramilitary forces.
“It’s quite a big military apparatus and it’s still intact. There may be a series of command,” said Kevin Budning, director of scientific research on the CDA Institute.
“It’s really about the fee of war, so who’s [got] the stomach to lengthen this motion and to proceed the fighting,” he said, adding that the war is “absolutely existential” for Iran’s regime.
“The Iranian strategy could be very clearly to maintain taking punishment for so long as they’ll and wait for the Americans to maneuver on,” Salt said.
What would key challenges be for the U.S.?
Along with around 1,000,000 troops, Iran has a variety of military assets, including each short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.
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“The Iranians would have the capability to inflict casualties, and that’s something that in the US they haven’t really experienced in high numbers within the recent conflict,” Salt said.
Iran has already deployed its resources to successfully blockade the Strait of Hormuz, choking off one-third of the world’s oil supply.
This can be the form of conflict Iran has spent many years preparing for, Salt said.
“They’ve definitely prepared for that potential within the years leading as much as the present moment by the acquisition of several types of military technology (including) drones, missiles of varied ranges, and naval assets, including potentially anti-ship mines,” Salt said.
While a full-scale invasion is perhaps harder to execute, Budning said U.S. troop movement might indicate the U.S. is seeking to conduct smaller scale operations within the region, akin to raids.
One such objective for the U.S. could possibly be taking control of Kharg Island, a strategic location within the Strait of Hormuz
Trump said in a social media post Monday that the US was in talks with a “more reasonable regime” to finish the war in Iran, but he also issued a brand new warning over the Strait of Hormuz.
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is just not shortly reached, which it probably will probably be, and if the Hormuz Strait is just not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we’ll conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island,” Trump wrote.
The island is crucial, not only for Iran’s war effort but its entire economy, Budning said.
“Kharg Island is the economic hub of Iran. Ninety per cent of Iran’s oil exports are (sent through) there,” Budning said, adding that Iran would do all that it will probably to stop a U.S. takeover of the island.
“It is going to more than likely require boots on the bottom to try this. It will require a big all-service operation or pan-domain operation — air, land and sea,” he said.
Iran could see an attack on Kharg Island as an escalation, prompting them to step up its attacks on Gulf oil and gas infrastructure and emboldening Yemen’s Houthi rebels to dam the Red Sea, one other crucial shipping route, Budning said.
“The US and Israel have largely run out of hard military targets to attack. It’s been several weeks, hundreds of targets. Iran is holding strong with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.
Taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities will probably be hard, too, latest evaluation published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies said on Monday, despite the “tactical prowess” of the U.S. and Israeli forces.
“Despite clear tactical prowess, as demonstrated by the Israeli 2024 raid on a missile-production facility at Masyaf in Syria, and U.S. special forces’ capture of Nicolás Maduro in Caracas in January 2026, placing boots on the bottom to seize or neutralize the HEU, in hostile territory with unclear intelligence, is fraught with risk,” the report said.
The U.S. is running out of military options to resolve the conflict quickly, Budning said.
“The query is just not whether the US and Israel can win a war against Iran. It’s whether or not they could accomplish that quickly and efficiently and at an appropriate cost,” he added.
With the U.S. midterms approaching and domestic appetite for the war shrinking, Trump is prone to seek an off ramp fairly soon, Salt said.
The troop deployment within the region could possibly be a “coercive diplomatic signal” from Trump to the Iranian regime, Salt said, to bring them to the table and negotiate the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
“It’s… saying, look, should you don’t do what we wish, we’ll potentially escalate to ground forces,” Salt said.
“I might not be surprised if he (Trump) simply declares victory, just makes the statement no matter what the situation on the bottom is and just ends the conflict,” he said.
–with files from Reuters