'Iranian Quagmire': Experts Warn American 'Boots on the Ground' Could Trap U.S. - Iran News
U.S. Central Command, CENTCOM, is publishing on its website the number of strikes carried out in Iran, the types of military assets used, and the categories of targets – from command-and-control systems to ballistic missile sites. But the list contains no details on specific targets, the munitions used, or what is known as BDA – battle damage assessment – which indicates the effectiveness of the operation and the extent to which its gains have been preserved.
While it is clear the U.S. military will not share every detail with the public or provide up-to-date satellite imagery from the battlefield, experts say the partial picture reflects another reason as well: an aerial bombing campaign is inherently limited.
"CENTCOM's targeting list points to the limitations of airpower and why boots on the ground keep coming up," Dr. Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington and an expert on aerial warfare, told Haaretz. Indeed, even as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about talks with Tehran and suspending attacks on Iranian energy sites, American "boots" are already making their way to the Middle East. "The deployment of not one but two Marine Expeditionary Units [roughly 5,000 Marines total, with reports of further reinforcements being discussed] is not ambiguous," Grieco said.
On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had ordered the deployment of about 2,000 paratroopers to the Middle East. They are part of an immediate response force capable of deploying anywhere in the world within 18 hours of an order. In total, roughly 50,000 troops are currently assigned to the Iran operation.
Even before the question of what missions U.S. ground forces might be tasked with in Iran arises, there is growing concern about becoming entangled in an "Iranian quagmire," as well as the deep public aversion in the United States to such ventures.
"'Boots on the ground' would make the Iraq war look like a walk in the park," said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a U.S.-based foreign policy think tank. "There is simply very little appetite for another Middle East ground war, and that includes Trump's own base," Grieco added. "The country has spent two decades absorbing the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan – in lives, money and strategic credibility – and the lesson most Americans drew from those experiences was not 'we should have committed more troops.' Trump himself ran in part against that legacy."
Analysts point to two possible objectives for a ground operation in Iran – and the risks involved in each. One could be the seizure of Kharg Island, the hub of Iran's oil exports. But, according to Grieco, "Iran has been planning for exactly this contingency for decades. The geographic and tactical realities are unfavorable. Iranian forces would deploy drones and naval assets against ships and forces in areas near the strait, making it a dangerous undertaking." She said it may be possible to take the island, but Iran would likely redirect fire to other points along hundreds of kilometers of coastline, pulling drones and missiles inland, particularly into the more mountainous eastern regions.
A second possible objective for ground forces would be to ensure the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities or to secure its stockpile of enriched uranium. The United States and Israel have struck nuclear sites both in June and in the current round of fighting. But "such attacks can damage or temporarily disable a facility," Grieco said, "yet they cannot guarantee its destruction or prevent it from being rebuilt or from producing enriched uranium again."
This, she added, is the structural argument for a ground operation – and why such a presence would likely come at a high cost. More broadly, she noted, claims that Iran has been "set back decades" tend to exaggerate the impact of airstrikes. "The United States and Israel can degrade infrastructure and known stockpiles, but they cannot bomb away the industrial knowledge needed to rebuild."
There is another reason for the limits of the overwhelming air power wielded by the United States and Israel: this is not a battlefield Iran seeks to win. "Tehran's strategy was never to match U.S. or Israeli airpower symmetrically – that would be unwinnable," Grieco said. Iran's strength, she argued, lies in sustaining prolonged attrition, reflecting a core element of asymmetry: "Iran does not need to win militarily. It just needs not to lose badly enough to keep launching." Another aspect of that asymmetry applies to the attacking side as well: the challenge for the United States and Israel is not only to intercept what is already in the air, but also to locate and destroy mobile launch systems. "The attacker has to find everything," Grieco said. "The defender only has to hide something."
And, of course, the asymmetry is especially evident when comparing the costs of the war on both sides. "The cost exchange is not in America's favor – interceptors costing millions versus drones costing thousands," Hartung said. According to him, "half or more of the cost so far has been for munitions and interceptors."
In the wake of the war in Ukraine, which shares several features of asymmetric warfare, Dr. Grieco and her colleague Maximilian have developed the concept of "hybrid air denial." Unlike air superiority, which prevents an adversary entirely from using the airspace, "air denial is more modest," she explained. "You don't need to win the air war – you just need to make the air domain sufficiently costly and contested that the other side cannot operate freely."
The "hybrid" aspect, she added, is that this logic extends beyond the battlefield: cheap, widely available drones can shut down airports, disrupt shipping lanes, drive civilian populations into shelters, and erode public confidence in a government's ability to defend its airspace – all without a single soldier crossing a border.
Iran has internalized this logic, Grieco noted. "It doesn't need to defeat Israel or the United States in the air. It needs to make the air domain costly enough, and the disruption persistent enough, that Israeli civilian life is continuously strained and the other side eventually asks whether the price is worth bearing indefinitely."
Beyond the immediate questions about the effectiveness of a ground operation and the persistence of asymmetric warfare, the researchers also point to broader issues that warrant attention. Regarding the limited information the Pentagon has released about the targets of U.S. strikes, Hartung said that, alongside the fact that the administration is not providing details even to members of Congress, "we see bombings of elementary schools, hospitals and other non-military targets alongside military sites and political leadership." Trump, he said, "thought this would be 'easy,' like Venezuela. Instead, he set off a region-wide war."
Grieco pointed to another risk: U.S. rivals are watching and learning how to fight the United States, particularly by studying Iran's use of drones and missiles, a tactic refined over years by proxy forces in Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, she added, "nobody is seriously asking what the Middle East will look like when this is over. A weakened Iran is not necessarily a more compliant Iran. A regime that has survived an American and Israeli military campaign, even a badly damaged one, may emerge more hardline, more isolated and more convinced that the only real security guarantee is a nuclear weapon."
The architecture of the Abraham Accords, the security relationship between Israel and the United States, and the competing interests of Gulf states are also issues that merit serious discussion. "None of these are small issues," Grieco concluded. Yet in a world where the U.S. president is seeking a quick victory image and political gain, "the absence of any serious public discussion about the postwar order, while the war itself is still being fought, is a significant failure of strategic thinking."