Three months into his war with Iran, President Trump faces a fork in the road. Thousands of American and Israeli strikes have killed Iranian senior leaders, shattered Iran’s air force and navy, and attrited its missile stocks and production facilities. But the Islamic Republic remains armed and defiant. Its clerical regime is intact and in control, with hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders ascendant. After battering its Arab neighbors, U.S. bases, and Israel, the majority of Iran’s missile and drone arsenal remains intact, according to intelligence assessments cited in the New York Times. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has set off a global energy crisis that is biting Africa and Asia first, but will hit Europe and America with full force soon. The impact of the Strait’s closure goes far beyond oil and natural gas: numerous other critical economic goods, from aluminum to fertilizer, also depend on Gulf inputs or production.
With American and Iranian negotiating positions far apart, major economic pain drawing near, and U.S. ground troops in the region, Trump’s options remain what they were two months ago: the United States can either escalate, climb down, or hunker down and try to wait Iran out.
A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle conducts a combat air patrol in the Air Force Central Command area of responsibility, June 10, 2025. These patrols are conducted in order to deter aggression and aid stability within the region. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Staff Sgt. John C.B. Ennis)
An American retreat from the Gulf would be humiliating. Despite causing tremendous damage to Iran’s military and state capacity, the United States would be leaving the Islamic Republic in functional control of the Persian Gulf. Iran’s tollbooth on the Strait could generate tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue. Its unsanctioned oil exports and its continued ability to generate salvos of drones and missiles against its neighbors will enable it to rebuild and rearm. War reparations to Iran, under the guise of an “investment fund,” may even be in the offing. Any claims of American victory would sound hollow, if not ridiculous.
Should Trump declare victory and go home, he would be ceding American preeminence in the Gulf, long taken for granted as an American strategic birthright. The Carter Doctrine would be dead and buried. The continued basing of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in battered Bahrain would be called into question, while the remaining Gulf Cooperation Council states might look elsewhere for both security and investment partners. The entire petrodollar system, and with it the “exorbitant privilege” of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, could be in peril.
Such an outcome is regularly described as an American Suez, an analogy to the 1956 Franco-British military misadventure that rang the bell on European empires and independent power projection. But America is not postwar Britain. After World War II, the United Kingdom was a financially exhausted, medium-sized island nation, functionally subservient to the new superpower across the Atlantic. Britain’s colonies were declaring independence, its military preeminence was long gone, and its elite was blinkered and bloodied by two world wars. The United States of 2026, for all of its industrial atrophy and fiscal recklessness, remains the only state capable of major expeditionary military action. America is still the biggest engine of both economic consumption and innovation. Trump is right that the United States is better insulated from energy shocks than other large economies (though the attack on Iran and his equally foolish war on clean energy will impact America for a long time to come). Retreat from the Middle East would not spell the end of America as a superpower.
There is a far worse historical parallel at hand than Suez. A true military disaster in the Persian Gulf, an expedition destroyed, not defeated, would have enormous if unknowable, impacts on America’s power, credibility, and internal politics. Should Trump decide to put substantial American ground troops on Iranian soil, he may be rolling the dice on an American Syracuse.
An F-15E Strike Eagle stands static on the flightline before morning takeoffs at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, Jan. 5, 2021. The 48th Fighter Wing conducts daily flying operations in order to ensure the Liberty Wing can deliver unique air combat capabilities when called upon by its NATO allies. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Madeline Herzog)
Syracuse was the penultimate blunder of the Peloponnesian War, Athens’ thirty-year struggle with Sparta for leadership of the Greek world. A dynamic, democratic empire, increasingly distrusted by both allies and enemies for its hubris and ruthlessness, decided to launch a preventive war far from its shores to destroy a potential future enemy. Athens’ army came to ruin, its hegemony was broken, and total defeat followed a decade later. History doesn’t repeat itself, but Syracuse’s parallel to the present moment is striking – far more so than the much-discussed Thucydides trap that debuted a decade ago.
A full-blown invasion and war of regime change was and is a non-starter. Iran is an enormous country, home to more than 90 million people, and guarded by forbidding topography. The entire U.S. Army and Marine Corps would be inadequate to invade and occupy Iran.
Various smaller objectives have been floated for this expeditionary force. Trump has openly discussed the idea of seizing Kharg Island, tucked in the northern corner of the Gulf, through which 90 percent of Iran’s oil is exported. The idea would be an economic squeeze on Iran, with Kharg Island to be traded back for an open Strait and long-term peace.
A Kharg seizure also has enormous operational risk. Kharg Island sits in the northern corner of the Persian Gulf, next to Kuwait. Landing even a lone Marine Expeditionary Unit, with its battalion of infantry, would require one of two methods. The first is sailing a small flotilla of assault ships and their escorts up the narrow, contested Gulf. They would be vulnerable to anti-ship missiles, drones, and naval mines. Since this war began, the U.S. Navy has been notably reticent about putting its ships close to Iran’s shores.
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan Butler, left, a machine gunner, and Cpl. Gevorg Hovasafyan, a section leader, both with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, carry an M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun during Range 400 at Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, Oct. 25, 2025. Range 400 is a dynamic live-fire range that allows companies to rehearse tactics and procedures for attacking fortified areas. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Juan Torres)
A U.S. Marine with Combat Logistics Battalion 2, Combat Logistics Regiment 2, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, posts security at the Infantry Immersion Trainer at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Nov. 21, 2025. The IIT is a facility which provides an urban training environment for Marines and Sailors, aiding in increasing combat efficiency by training in realistic conditions. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Isabella Ramos)
The second option would be a long-range air assault, landing troops by helicopter (an even riskier airborne drop of paratroops is a corollary). Though Iran’s integrated air defense network has been savaged by U.S. and Israel strikes both last summer and over the past month, a plethora of local defenses, from drones to ground small arms fire, will put transport helicopters under threat. The vulnerability of helicopters has been a lesson relearned over America’s past two decades of Middle East wars.
Once ashore, a few thousand American troops would likely rapidly gain control of the island. But barring a quick and unlikely Iranian capitulation, they would then be easy targets. Kharg sits about twenty miles from the Iranian mainland. Rockets, missiles, artillery, Shahed drones, and even simple first-person view (FPV) quadcopters could all hit U.S. troops confined to a small island filled with flammable oil storage tanks. Though Marines would land with deployable air and missile defense systems, these would be limited and potentially difficult to resupply. Even the inveterately hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, founded as a pro-Israel information operation, has warned that Kharg Island could be a trap for U.S. troops.
An operation deep inside Iran is another potential course of action. A large special operations raid to confiscate Iran’s buried highly enriched uranium (HEU) near Isfahan has been advocated on one of the president’s favorite TV shows and reportedly remains under consideration. The successful recovery of the pilot of a downed U.S. F-15 jet in the same neighborhood demonstrated America’s reach, but was also a near-run thing, with aircraft losses that totaled $500 million.
An HEU raid would be a supersized Operation Eagle Claw, the disastrous 1980 attempt to extract the U.S. Embassy hostages in Tehran. It would put the cream of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) hundreds of miles into Iran, supported by potentially thousands of conventional troops. An expeditionary airfield and perhaps weeks of excavation would be required. Mission accomplishment would be the largely symbolic confiscation of some portion of Iran’s nuclear fuel.
A more reckless military operation than an HEU raid is difficult to imagine. But the removal of Iran’s “nuclear dust” remains a fixation of Trump’s. In the wake of the war’s serial strategic failures and irrelevant tactical victories (the destruction of Iran’s navy and air force), Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have returned again and again to the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program as both a casus belli and a prerequisite of peace. Facing defeat, Trump could roll the dice on a risky raid to sell a story of victory to Americans and the world.
A final concept is to seize other islands at the opposite end, such as Qeshm, Abu Musa, and the Tunbs, to help pry the Strait open by force. The U.S. has attempted to pull the Emiratis, who claim legal ownership of this territory, into such an operation. Though less vulnerable than a force on Kharg Island, troops on the Strait islands would still be easy targets, with Qeshm just a few miles from the city of Bandar Abbas. Significant firepower could probably be brought to bear on U.S. troops holding flat, open islands in the Strait.
All of these potential ground operations are fraught with risk. At the United States Marine Corps’ officer training in Quantico, Virginia, one of the most useful injunctions to student lieutenants is just three words: “Proximity negates skill.” When I first heard it, more than 15 years ago, it referred to the lethality of urban insurgent tactics like improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers. But it applies equally well to more conventional weapons and tactics. Old machine guns and new first-person view (FPV) drones are both more effective the closer they are to a target. One of Iran’s Lego propaganda videos ends with an invitation to American sailors and soldiers: “Come Closer.” It is not entirely bluster.
American air superiority, established and maintained from the first day of this war, may well preclude worst-case scenarios and the likelihood of an American Syracuse. But Iran has continued to surprise Trump and the prosecutors of this war, even if major events like the bombardment of the GCC states and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have been predicted for decades. The dangers to an American expeditionary force on Iranian soil are also known knowns. A second Iranian hostage crisis, of U.S. troops instead of diplomats, is within the realm of possibility.
The third and perhaps most likely outcome is the status quo. Ongoing, inconclusive negotiations, a tenuous ceasefire regularly broken by discrete strikes from both sides, and only a trickle of Gulf oil reaching world markets. Trump has repeatedly insisted that the Strait of Hormuz will open on its own and that whether the Strait is open or closed doesn’t really matter to America.
This strategy presupposes that Iran has a lower threshold for economic pain than the United States. Publicly, Trump is blithely indifferent, openly affirming his lack of concern about the economic impact of the war on average Americans or on the coming midterm elections. U.S. stock markets remain in rude good health.
Circumstances and actions have delayed the inevitable reckoning. Near-record volumes of oil were at sea before the war began. Western sanctions had also left a large amount of Russian and Iranian oil on tankers, awaiting buyers. Hundreds of millions of barrels have been released from the strategic petroleum reserves of the United States, China, and other large countries. Time is running out, though. Fuel riots have already begun in some African countries, Asian nations are enacting emergency measures, and gas is averaging nearly $4.50 a gallon in the U.S. Inflation is surging as a result. Eventually, warns oil researcher Christof Ruhl, an oil shock will hit road and air freight and then “cascade through the economy.” The idea that this is politically sustainable in the United States, even for Donald Trump, is far-fetched.
Whether Iran can hold out remains the bigger question, viewed through a more opaque lens. American and Israeli bombardment did real economic damage. The rial has halved in value since last summer’s Twelve-Day War. But a war economy can cover many holes for a while, as the Russians have been demonstrating for years now. Both licit and illicit overland trade into Iran have surged since the Strait closed. Additional border crossings with Pakistan have been opened, while maritime traffic across the Caspian Sea to Russia has increased. China’s willingness to extend credit or to buy oil in advance remains unknown. If Iran’s new leadership feels economic hardship could prompt another round of widespread unrest, the current stand-off could drive them to renew hostilities, not back down, some experts fear.
No one is coming to bail the Trump administration out of this disaster. A summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping two weeks ago yielded nothing substantive. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has sneered at Britain’s Royal Navy while President Trump effectively threatened the end of NATO’s Article 5 collective defense if European states didn’t bail him out of the briar patch he has hurled the world into. America’s allies demurred.
British, French, and even German warships may help secure the Strait of Hormuz – but only after an enduring ceasefire agreement. It remains unclear which path Trump will choose. The administration says it is negotiating a ceasefire with Iran, with serial announcements that an agreement is imminent. The Iranians have been apt to publicly contradict this line. They also remember that this war began with airstrikes launched during active negotiations. Iran also rightly doubts that the United States will abide by any terms it signs.
A negotiated settlement remains the least bad resolution of the war, but getting there anytime soon is far from guaranteed.
About the Author: Dr. Gil Barndollar
Dr. Gil Barndollar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship and a Non-Resident Fellow at Defense Priorities. His research focuses on military manpower and mobilization. From 2009 to 2016, Gil served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps.
