As the United States and Israel enter the second month in their war against Iran, all three countries appear bent on pressing strategic advantages rather than ending hostilities shy of their own stretch goals.
With dueling ceasefire proposals in play, President Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to claim a negotiating edge. “They want to make a deal so badly.” If they don’t, he added, the U.S. will “just keep blowing them away.”
Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a longtime commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, returned the taunt. “We have just one message for the American soldiers: Come closer.”
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump is pushing a 15-point proposal to end Iran hostilities amid large troop deployments to the region. Distant from a deal, he is threatening to destroy power plants if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz.
By Thursday, Mr. Trump said he would extend his deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz until April 6. Some analysts speculated it was a stalling tactic to allow the thousands of U.S. troops headed to the region – including Army paratroopers trained in high-risk missions – more time to arrive.
The president’s attempt to march to the peace table through threats or attacks on power plants might ultimately work. But without a shared endgame for the U.S-Israel alliance and Iran, that march appears stalled, with the threat of massive U.S. military action mounting.
Officials in Tehran suggest they are unmoved by the White House’s recent 15-point ceasefire proposal. On Wednesday, Israel said it had killed the naval chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Alireza Tangsiri, who was helping block the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian officials, meanwhile, have denied any direct talks and have rejected the reported U.S. terms as “extremely maximalist.” Tehran has issued its own shorter list of demands to the U.S.
Iran has “no intention of negotiating for now,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said this week. Tehran will “end the war when it decides to do so,” another official said on state television, “and when its own conditions are met.”
Wargames and endgames
Both sides are projecting confidence that they can outlast the other if unable to agree on terms for peace.
For Iran’s leaders, this involves surviving what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth describes as “relentless” decapitation strikes. For the Trump administration, it means surviving November’s midterm elections.
Against the backdrop of rising gas prices, some 60% of Americans say that U.S. military action in Iran has been “excessive,” according to an Associated Press poll released this week. While depriving Iran of nuclear weapons is an “extremely” or “very” important policy objective for two-thirds of respondents, an equal number say that keeping gas prices in check is, too – a tricky political balancing act for the administration.
For now, though it is uncertain that hard-line negotiations will bring peace, what is clear, analysts say, is that U.S. troops are heading into harm’s way as the president weighs a high-risk escalation in the war.
Possible strategic moves
Tehran has already rejected as nonstarters many of the 15 points the U.S. has reportedly floated in its peace proposal.
These include shutting down the country’s nuclear program by removing all enriched uranium. There would also be a cap or an outright ban on long-range ballistic missiles and an end to backing proxy militias in the region, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen.
Most importantly, in the short term, Iran would have to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
In return, the U.S. would lift major economic sanctions, allow Iran back into global financial systems, and restore oil exports. Support for nonmilitary nuclear cooperation – such as nuclear energy infrastructure – and rebuilding assistance might also be in play.
Iranian hard-liners, in the meantime, are reportedly stepping up their calls for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.
Should Iran continue to resist dealmaking efforts, the U.S. military – including the 11th and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Units, which comprise some 4,700 troops and specialize in launching attacks from ships to shore – is on its way, equipped with aircraft, artillery, and infantry, as well as Defense Department plans to reopen the strait by force.
The deployment also includes thousands of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, the Pentagon’s premier crisis-response force.
Their sights are set on Iran’s Kharg Island, which processes 90% of the country’s oil exports. Seizing the 8-square-mile island could help force Iran to reopen the strait.
The island, about 25 miles off the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf, “could be isolated and captured, because it’s not that large,” says retired Col. Mark Cancian, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But first, U.S. forces would have to get through the strait, which would be heavily targeted by Iranian forces, analysts say. Along the way are smaller islands, Abu Musa and Larak, fortified with Iranian bunkers, that might also need to be seized to force Iran’s hand.
They could be used “as part of the effort to open the strait, and then [the forces] would aim for Kharg Island,” Mr. Cancian adds.
In anticipation of this, Iran has been preparing its defenses, reportedly laying a range of explosive mines along the island to hinder resupply efforts. It has also been bringing in air defenses and beefing up forces there.
The U.S. military would need “to bait and ambush remaining Iranian forces, drawing them out of hiding,” argues Benjamin Jensen, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
While seizing the island would be one objective, holding it could require additional U.S. forces.
A time for clarity
Last week, Mr. Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum demanding Iran reopen the strait or face U.S. attacks that would “obliterate” the country’s energy and power plants.
But by Monday, he appeared to back down, saying he would extend the deadline to let diplomacy take its course. He added, however, that this suspension was “subject to the success of ongoing meetings and discussions.” On Thursday, he further delayed the threatened assault to April 6.
What meetings the president is referring to remains unclear. Iran has said no meetings are taking place, only message exchanges via intermediaries.
Should Mr. Trump follow through with threats to attack power stations, it could knock out electricity for many Iranians, as well as for desalination plants that provide drinking water for several desert nations, analysts say.
Such attacks might not comply with the laws of armed conflict, which prohibit directing attacks against civilians or civilian infrastructure, notes retired Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr., a former deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force.
While military law allows for attacks that provide a pathway to peace, whether the U.S. strategy fits that definition is not clear, argues Mr. Dunlap, now executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University School of Law.
“It may give them a better chance to overthrow the regime that has inflicted so much misery on them.” But, he warns, “there is no question that the Iranian people would suffer.”