Ground Troops in Iran?

Below is an article summarizing our conversation on this week’s podcast. It is provided for those who prefer to read rather than listen.

We are now 11 days into the U.S.-Iran conflict. In the first week of the conflict, the US expended more than 3,000 precision-guided munitions, decimated most of Iran’s navy—including the first ship sunk by a submarine-launched torpedo since the Falklands War—and destroyed IRGC command nodes across the country. The situation has developed faster than almost anyone predicted. And the harder questions are only now coming into focus.

Here is where things stand, and what we think the next phase of this conflict actually looks like.

The Ground Troops Question

The social media chatter about American boots on the ground in Iran has grown louder, with speculation centering on two locations: Kharg Island, in the northern Persian Gulf where Iran conducts most of its oil exports, and the islands near the Strait of Hormuz.

The case for large-scale ground troops—the kind needed for true regime change—simply does not exist right now. Operations like that require months of preparation. The Iraq invasion took six months of buildup and consisted of over 150,000 troops. While the capability to conduct a large-scale air campaign is in place, the infrastructure to conduct an Iraq-style invasion is not. More importantly, the primary objectives of this campaign—dismantling the 3H network of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, destroying Iran’s conventional military capacity, and neutralizing the nuclear program—do not require a ground invasion to achieve. The air campaign is doing the first three progressively and effectively.

The nuclear question is where ground forces become a genuine, if highly risky, possibility. Iran’s enrichment capability has been substantially destroyed. But the physical stockpiles of highly enriched uranium—material that was potentially buried beneath Natanz during the June strikes—remain unaccounted for. These are not warheads. They are canisters of 60-percent-enriched uranium, potentially dispersed across multiple sites. The Iranians almost certainly anticipated that this material would become a target and have had every incentive to scatter it.

Recovering that material would require extraordinary intelligence—specific location data, probably from Mossad or CIA—and a special operations raid under extraordinarily hostile conditions. Iran knows this is coming. They are prepared for it. And any team going in would be operating against a regime with nothing left to lose and would be fighting back hard.

The enriched uranium stockpile is the last real bargaining chip Iran holds. They know it. We know it. That makes going after it both the most important objective and the most dangerous one.

The cancellation of an 82nd Airborne training exercise has fed speculation that large-scale airborne operations are being planned. That may be reading too much into a single data point — training exercises get cancelled for any number of reasons. But it cannot be entirely dismissed either. What seems more likely than a U.S. ground assault is an Israeli special operations mission, potentially backed by American air power. Israel has far more skin in this game—a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat to Israel in a way it simply is not to the United States. That asymmetry in stakes makes it easier to justify the asymmetry in risk tolerance that a ground mission would require.

Politically, an Israeli-led operation also gives the administration considerably more room to maneuver domestically. American air support for an Israeli raid to secure nuclear material is a much easier sell than American soldiers on the ground in Tehran.

Russia's Intelligence Sharing Is No Surprise

The United States has been sharing intelligence with Ukraine that directly enables combat operations against Russian forces. Russia sharing intelligence with Iran is the mirror image of exactly that. The causes may be more or less just, but the logic is the same, and anyone who has been paying attention to how great powers behave in proxy and adjacent conflicts should not be surprised.

More practically, the Russian intelligence sharing does not appear to be making much difference. Iran has not successfully hit a U.S. naval vessel. The targets being struck are largely predictable anyway. The operational impact, so far, is marginal.

Venezuela, Iran, China: 3D Chess or Coincidence?

A compelling narrative has emerged that the Venezuela operation and the Iran campaign are connected elements of a deliberate grand strategy. That they are a master plan designed to squeeze China’s energy supply, demonstrate American military reach, and walk into future summit negotiations from a position of overwhelming leverage.

Large-scale military operations of this kind are extraordinarily difficult to keep coordinated as deliberate strategy. If something like this were true, it is very likely that it would have already leaked from the administration. And the Venezuela operation has the fingerprints of a president focused on his own backyard, rather than a sophisticated chess move aimed at Beijing. Venezuelan oil is also low-grade crude that will take years and significant investment to make useful. Also, China only gets about 4% of its oil from Venezuela. It is not the kind of asset you seize as part of a global energy strategy. It is far likelier that the Venezuela strategy was exactly what the administration said it was: a focused approach to the Western Hemisphere.

Iran is a more complex case. The administration had been pressing for a nuclear deal and lost patience. The regime has spent fifty years destabilizing the region, funding proxy violence, and working toward a nuclear capability. At some point, the calculus shifted from coercive diplomacy to direct action. That is a legitimate strategic choice and does not require a China theory to explain it.

That said, the downstream effects on China are real, even if they were not the primary intent. China gets roughly half its oil from the Middle East (if only 14% from Iran). The Strait of Hormuz closure disrupts that supply and puts pressure on Beijing’s 100-day strategic reserve of oil. And the U.S. is walking into a Trump-Xi summit having just demonstrated, in vivid terms, that it is willing and able to project decisive military force across the world.

Whether or not this was designed as leverage, it functions as leverage. Xi Jinping is watching U.S. military operations around the globe and doing the same math as everyone else.

The complication is that this leverage cuts in both directions. China is also watching the United States burn through its high-end munitions inventory at a pace that cannot be quickly replenished. Beijing is likely noting that the United States may have a meaningful capability gap opening up between now and 2027 or 2028. That window doesn’t necessarily make Chinese adventurism more likely in the near term, but it could be a part of a larger decision to move on Taiwan.

China’s internal commentary on the Iran conflict has been telling. The dominant theme has been to sit back and let the United States consume itself in another Middle East conflict. China’s rise over the last two decades occurred largely while America was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Are We Already in World War III?

The question has moved from fringe concern to mainstream conversation. Volodymyr Zelensky has argued it started with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Jamie Dimon (the CEO of JPMorgan Chase) has said it has already begun. So are we in WWIII?

Well, it kind of depends on your definition.

If World War III means a direct military confrontation between nuclear-armed great powers, we are not there. If it means a global systemic conflict involving multiple theaters, proxy forces, economic warfare, and the breakdown of the post-WWII international order, then we are somewhere on that continuum and moving in a concerning direction.

The more useful frame is probably the concept of the long geopolitical cycle. The order established at the end of World War II—the Bretton Woods institutions, the UN Security Council framework, the American-led alliance system, the primacy of international law in governing the use of force—is visibly fraying. The conditions that historically precede these convulsive cycle-endings are present. There is an ambitious rising power with authoritarian characteristics, a prevailing power that is financially overextended (a $1.9 trillion deficit), military overextension over two decades of foreign engagement, deep internal political divisions, and the erosion of rule-of-law constraints in favor of raw power calculations.

But intellectual honesty requires acknowledging the limits of these frameworks. Before 2000, serious scholars were writing about the “end of history” and a permanent liberal peace underwritten by American hegemony. Thomas Friedman’s famous observation that no two countries with McDonald’s had ever gone to war with each other was treated as near-law. . . until Russia and Ukraine, both with McDonald’s, went to war. Grand historical predictions have a poor track record precisely because the world is too complex and contingent for them.

But. The warning signals are genuine, the trajectory is concerning, and the time to get one’s house in order—economically, militarily, diplomatically, institutionally—is before the crisis fully arrives, not during it. Inspired, mature leadership that is willing to make difficult decisions across political cycles will be required. Whether that leadership materializes is the open question that no model or theory can answer in advance.

The Taiwan Timeline

One final consideration about China and Taiwan.

The Davidson Window is the assessment that China would have the capability to move on Taiwan by 2027. This assessment has dominated strategic planning discussions for years.

We believe that Xi Jinping has three constraints that all point to a window after mid-2028 rather than before. First, the 21st Party Congress in November 2027, at which he will secure an unprecedented fourth term. He will not risk a failed Taiwan operation in the months leading up to that consolidation of power. Second, winter conditions in the Taiwan Strait make a post-Party Congress crossing in late 2027 or early 2028 operationally extremely difficult. Third, the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine until after the Sochi Winter Olympics concluded. China will not choose to be a global pariah during games it intends to use to demonstrate the superiority of its system. Those games end in late July 2028.

Late summer 2028 also brings a contentious American presidential election. This moment of intense domestic distraction is one China could seek to exploit.

What to Watch for

Do any special operations activities materialize around the nuclear material? Does the 82nd Airborne cancellation prove significant or irrelevant? Does the Trump-Xi summit at the end of the month shift the diplomatic landscape? And does Iran find any way to meaningfully escalate before its remaining military capacity is fully exhausted?

Gray and Gritty is a national security podcast hosted by LJ Winnefeld and Admiral (Ret.) Sandy Winnefeld. New episodes every Tuesday.