Pesident Trump keeps signaling that the Iran war he started with Israel is nowhere close to completion, despite his repeated assurances otherwise — and despite the war’s mounting economic costs stemming largely from the Strait of Hormuz’s near closure. More U.S. troops are arriving in the Middle East as Trump weighs various options for a ground offensive to accomplish his objective of … well, that seems to change by the day. Trump has struggled to even articulate the goals of the war, which have pinballed from regime change to destroying Iran’s missile capability to forestalling the country from producing a nuclear weapon—which makes settling on a plan somewhat difficult. Still, if Trump does choose to escalate, he will likely choose from a suite of options that would accomplish specific military goals, like extracting Iran’s uranium—a highly risky operation that Trump is open to, per a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday night.
As Rosemary Kelanic sees it, that would be the worst of the likely options Trump is being presented with. Kelanic is director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities and previously taught at Notre Dame and Williams College. She is also the author of the book Black Gold and Blackmail: Oil and Great Power Politics and a frequent contributor to media outlets on energy policy and U.S. strategy in the Middle East. I spoke with her about various scenarios for U.S. ground troops in Iran, from the merely dangerous to the “nonsensical.”
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