With the US preparing options for a potential ground operation in Iran, Israel is unlikely to contribute manpower to the effort — a prospect that has drawn criticism among the American public but, experts say, reflects strategic calculations and operational realities.

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“Much like during Operation Desert Storm, during which Israel did not participate in ground operations in Iraq despite sustaining Scud missile fire from Iraq, it is unlikely that, should there be any US ground operations against Iran, the IDF would participate overtly,” Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told The Times of Israel.

According to Misztal, while parallels can be drawn to the 1991 Gulf War, the rationale this time is different — reflecting how the region has evolved.

“In 1991, the United States asked Israel to stay out of the war in order to avoid discord with its Arab coalition partners,” Misztal noted. “This time around, that is not a concern.”

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Misztal said the presence of Iran-backed groups on Israel’s borders means Israeli forces are needed closer to home “to continue defending against Iranian proxies, however degraded they might be.”

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Still, Misztal did not rule out some level of Israeli involvement on Iranian soil.

“While Israel’s ground forces are likely to remain close to home, that does not mean that Israeli special forces might not participate in covert activities in Iran, either in support of or together with their US counterparts,” he said.

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After Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “total victory” in the conflict that followed. Yet more than two years later Israel’s enemies — while unquestionably weakened — are still standing.

Hamas and its gunmen still rule over the ruins of half of Gaza. Hizbollah, which Netanyahu said was “crushed” in 2024, fires a steady stream of rockets from Lebanon on northern Israel. And less than a year after he declared a “historic victory” against Iran, Israel and the US are back at war with the Islamic republic.

Rather than promise decisive triumph, the prime minister now speaks of the long arc of history, rising and falling threats, and changing the region’s “balance of power” — all as he prepares Israelis for a future in which dangers are constant and conflict open-ended.

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According to Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser still considered close to the premier, the succession of offensives in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran was designed to avoid simultaneous, full-scale wars on multiple fronts.

“The logic was to take out the proxies in order to focus on Iran . . . and reach the attack on Iran in the best and most co-ordinated position,” said Amidror, now at the JINSA think-tank in Washington. “On every one of the fronts there was a strong hit, but the work is not done.”

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U.S. troops storming a secretive, underground nuclear facility to seize Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium may sound far-fetched, but it is an option President Donald Trump is reportedly considering to achieve his main objective in the war: preventing the regime from developing nuclear weapons.

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Senior administration officials said at the start of the war that the US might consider diluting Iran’s highly enriched uranium on site, rather than removing it from the country. But that would be a large, complex and time-consuming operation, said Jonathan Ruhe, an expert on Iran’s nuclear programme at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a conservative think tank in Washington DC.

Seizing and taking the uranium out of Iran is faster and would allow the US to dilute the material in the United States, Ruhe said. The operation would be deeply risky no matter how it is done, he added.

“You’ve got basically a half ton of what’s effectively weapons grade uranium that you’ve got to extricate,” Ruhe said. “And there are a million things that could go wrong.”

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President Trump is mulling a deployment of U.S. troops on the ground in Iran to remove the country’s highly enriched uranium, a complex and dangerous operation that could take days to complete.

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Retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, who served as the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom), said the U.S. could use the Joint Special Operations Command forces, including Army Rangers, which have recently been deployed to the Middle East; rely on the 101st Airborne, an elite light infantry division known for its air assault operations; or utilize the combination of both since they have “worked together before, and that probably brings your biggest scale to it.”

Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU), two of which have been ordered to the Centcom region in recent weeks, are designed for amphibious operations, and they could also partake in the operation. However, they have not “trained as specifically as those forces [have], and they’re not airborne qualified, so you’d have to seize some territory to get them in somewhere,” Harward said in an interview with The Hill.

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“It could be as short as a day, but I would assume, with the tunnels and all the things and what they’ve done to prepare for it, it would probably take longer,” Harward, the executive vice president for international business and strategy at Shield AI, said.

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Harward, the former Centcom commander, argued the high stakes of the mission and the fact the Iranian military knows the U.S. is coming make for unfavorable conditions to execute the it now. 

“Focus on the other things. First, if you stop the missiles and you can open up the Strait of Hormuz, you can take the time to do whatever you want, and as the Israelis are adamantly pursuing, they’re going after regime change,” he told The Hill. “Well, if you get off those conditions, why take the risk? At that point, you could go get the uranium with no risk.”

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U.S. military commanders were worried in recent years that the bases they were using in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states would be vulnerable to Iranian missile and drone attacks. They proposed stationing key aircraft during a conflict in the western part of the kingdom, a safer distance away from Tehran.

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“There is a consequence of not being able to operate from a western defense network location, which would have provided us with some additional standoff from Iranian capabilities,” said Thomas Bergeson, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who served as the deputy commander of Central Command, which is responsible for the U.S. in the Middle East. “Your options are more limited, and therefore you have to take a little more risk than perhaps you would have wanted to.”

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Officials said Frank McKenzie, the Marine general who led Central Command from 2019 to 2022, broached the topic with Pentagon officials during his tenure, arguing that the U.S. could get Saudi Arabia to pay for much of the cost.

Commanders not only wanted to have more bases farther from Iran to deploy aircraft where they might be less vulnerable, they also wanted to be able to bring equipment and forces to the western part of the kingdom without having to pass through the Strait of Hormuz to Saudi ports in the Persian Gulf. Army Gen. Eric Kurilla, who led Central Command from 2022 to 2025, continued to advocate for that idea after McKenzie retired, according to former Pentagon officials.

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“More air bases in western Saudi Arabia would add depth, dispersal, survivability, and avoid the Hormuz chokepoint,” said David Deptula, a retired Air Force three-star general who is the dean of the Mitchell Institute. “They wouldn’t be invulnerable, but air bases are also very hard to shut down.”

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But McKenzie has continued to argue after retiring from the military that this isn’t enough. In an October 2024 article in Military Times, he wrote that the U.S. should work with Saudi Arabia and countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Oman to identify bases that are farther away from Iran.

“The number of Iranian weapons that could reach them would be significantly reduced, warning times would be increased and the Iranians would have a targeting problem in ascertaining from which bases U.S. aircraft operated,” he wrote.

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The Marines are arriving. The 82nd Airborne is next. And Washington still has not decided what it is doing.

The options on the table now include striking Iran’s main oil terminal, seizing a disputed Gulf island, or reopening Hormuz by force. Meanwhile, a parallel diplomatic track is opening in Islamabad, and Vice President JD Vance may be heading to Pakistan or Turkey to meet Iranian officials. Iran is communicating through intermediaries. Iran is also still fighting.

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The numbers behind that frustration are stark. According to an analysis by JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security of America), Bahrain may have expended up to 87 percent of its Patriot interceptor stocks. Kuwait and the UAE have burned through roughly 75 percent each. Yet the Trump administration is reportedly stonewalling Gulf requests to replenish supplies, even as the Americans fire $4 million interceptors against $20,000 Iranian drones.

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Iran is using tactical delay as a strategy in talks to end US and Israeli strikes that have decimated Tehran’s military capabilities amid a continued buildup of US forces in the Middle East, JINSA Generals & Admirals Program participant retired US Army General Joseph L. Votel — who led US Central Command from 2016 to 2019 — told RFE/RL in an interview on March 30.

Votel outlined the risks of escalation in the conflict and warned that without a political settlement to keep Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a prolonged international military presence might be required to keep the key oil and gas transit route open.

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RFE/RL: The United States is increasing its military presence in the region. Does this buildup suggest something beyond negotiation tactics?

Votel: You have to recognize, first and foremost, that part of the purpose of those deployments is a messaging to the Iranians.

This is also about making sure we can provide the maximum amount of options for our military leaders and our civilian leaders, so that, if the president decides something, he has an array of forces from which his military commanders can devise courses of action and approaches that he might approve.

Those two things — the messaging aspect and providing flexibility — are very, very important. And I think that is probably the most important thing these forces are doing right now. Certainly they can do other things, like going to Kharg Island or other actions, for example. But this messaging and being able to provide a lot of options for our leaders are two of the primary things we’re doing right now.

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RFE/RL: What about Iran’s leadership? We’re hearing increasing discussion in Washington about potential interlocutors within Iran’s current leadership, including parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. Does this suggest the United States is preparing to engage with elements of the existing regime rather than seeking its replacement?

Votel: What is likely, and what the United States government is beginning to appreciate, is that there will be some form of the regime that remains in place.

Our hope is there will be a leader who exhibits a level of pragmatism that we can work with to move this situation in a more positive direction and stop the fighting.

My concern is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leadership appears to have very heavy influence, which means there are significant hard-liners still associated with the government. That may make it more difficult.

It’s also important to recognize there is no apparent opposition force ready to take over. The regime is the regime, and we are going to have to deal with it as we move forward.

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The Trump administration’s conflicting posturing on the war in Iran — insisting on the one hand that a diplomatic deal is within reach while also threatening to escalate strikes and potentially deploy ground troops — has left experts and former administration officials uncertain about President Donald Trump’s next move.

President Donald Trump is considering seizing Kharg Island, a major source of Iran’s revenue that could give the U.S. more leverage in opening the Strait of Hormuz.

Doing so would require a large-scale operation and could lead to a significant number of U.S. casualties, experts say.