The line between air and ground warfare is getting thinner in Iran

Several days after the U.S. and Israel began dropping bombs on Iran, President Donald Trump told the New York Post that he wouldn’t rule out putting American soldiers on the ground as the conflict progressed.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said. “I say, ‘probably don’t need them’ (or) ‘if they were necessary.’”

In the roughly 4½ months since the war began, the president has edged closer and backed away from sending troops into the country. So far, the conflict has largely been fought from the skies, with the U.S. military conducting precision strikes against Iranian targets.

For a moment in April it appeared the fighting might ease, but the ceasefire has since deteriorated, with the U.S. resuming nightly strikes on Iranian infrastructure and military sites. A memorandum of understanding led by Vice President JD Vance has been cast aside, and there seems to be little outward movement toward peace.

As of mid-July, the war has claimed the lives of 17 American service members.

With the fighting ramping back up, a question weighs heavily on many American minds across the country: will the president go further with the conflict and put boots on the ground, or will the U.S. pull back?

Many lawmakers, including Utah Sen. John Curtis, are engaged in conversations about how to get Congress to vote on authorizing military operations. Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has maintained that Congress does not need to authorize the conflict.

To get a better grasp of the situation, the Deseret News spoke with Emily Harding, the director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Michael Rubin, the director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum.

What would American soldiers do on the ground?

Three islands in and around the Strait of Hormuz — Abu Musa, the Greater Tunb Island and the Lesser Tunb Island — currently help Iran keep a grip on the waterway, which sees the transportation of a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade.

“I could foresee the Americans seizing these islands, then it becomes a boots-on-the-ground situation,” Rubin told the Deseret News. Following a takeover of the islands, Rubin said he could see the U.S. seizing or destroying Iran’s ports.

Controlling the islands would make it more difficult for Iran to interfere with commercial shipping, he explained.

That said, controlling the islands would likely not eliminate Iran’s ability to attack ships in the strait.

“It is very, very difficult to completely take away their ability to harass shipping in the strait, because they’ve shown they can do it with cheap drones,” Harding added in a separate conversation with the Deseret News. “You can build anywhere, and you can shoot from anywhere.”

Another potential target is Kharg Island, which sits in the northeastern region of the Persian Gulf and is home to much of Iran’s oil export infrastructure. On several occasions, Trump has referenced a possible military operation on the island.

In June, he told Fox News that conducting a seizure of oil infrastructure on Kharg Island would be his “preference,” but he wasn’t sure Americans “have the appetite for it.”

Harding referenced this hesitancy to send in soldiers.

Putting American soldiers on the ground in Iran would be “very difficult, and it’s very dangerous,” she said. “From the three casualties we had over the weekend, our troops are already in harm’s way, and nobody wants to see more of that unless there is a very, very good reason.”

The two philosophical camps

Just as the American public varies in its views on foreign affairs, presidential administrations have taken drastically different approaches to the issue of Iran, since the Islamic regime took over the country in 1979.

“There is somewhat of a divide between people who think that Iran is serious about negotiations and would stick to a negotiation, and people who think that Iran will renege on any kind of agreement that they make, and they can’t be trusted if they sign an agreement,” Harding said, adding, “This, I think, is a fundamental divide in the universe.”

Harding said former President Barack Obama fell into the first camp, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falls into the second.

“There are also people in the U.S. who think the only message Iran really understands is force, and that they’re not going to make the kinds of concessions they need for the U.S. to be happy,” Harding said.

Vance referenced the divide during a recent conversation with Joe Rogan, in which he criticized those who believe Iran is unwilling to negotiate.

How to raise ‘the cost of not negotiating’

The way to bring Iran to the table, Rubin said, is to raise the cost of not negotiating.

He referenced former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1988 radio address in which he accepted an end to the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

Signing the resolution was “like drinking from a chalice of poison,” Khomeini said, but his country’s survival depended on it.

“How do you make the Iranians in negotiation drink from a ‘chalice of poison’?” Rubin asked. “You have to raise the cost.”

To Rubin, seizing Iran’s islands and drying up their revenues would raise the cost.

On the other hand, Harding said she was skeptical of a solely economic approach to negotiating with Iran. “For the people who are in charge, they only care so much about economics,” she said. “They care about survival, and they care about regime stability and regime ideology. So they’re going to be willing to put up with a lot of economic pain.”

If economic pain is concentrated among people the regime doesn’t care about, it won’t do much for negotiations, Harding continued. “A real and present threat of imminent regime collapse brings them to the negotiating table and makes them change their mind.”

“So how do you calibrate that pressure and get it to a point where they’re willing to make real concessions? And at the same time, how do you not do things that are absolutely horrific for the population of Iran? That’s a hard problem,” Harding said.

Does Iran actually pose a threat to the U.S.?

Trump has maintained that the war on Iran was waged to destroy their missile program and eliminate the possibility that they build a nuclear weapon.

“They have been working very hard for the last 20 or so years on their ballistic missile program — including some space launch vehicles that would have a very, very long range if they were not used to send something into space,” Harding said.

Iran is making ground in nuclear weapon development and is “perceived as crazy enough to use it,” Harding said. This combination makes life “very difficult for U.S. allies, including Israel and the Gulf countries,” and it also hurts the global economy.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has documented Iran’s intentions of developing a nuclear weapon since the early 2000s.

“We know they enrich uranium. We know they have the delivery system. We know that in the past they’ve worked on nuclear warhead design,” Rubin told the Deseret News.

Outside of nuclear development, Harding referenced Iran’s practice of funding proxy terror networks, some of which have the express goal of destroying America, and have killed Americans in the past.

“Whenever you hear people talk about Iran being empowered to do nasty things around the world, this is what they mean,” she said.

Why attack now?

In late December and early January, Iranians took to the streets in 190 cities to protest their failing economy and the ruling Islamic theocracy.

The regime’s response was deadly, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps given “shoot-to-kill orders.” Death tolls range from several thousand to more than 30,000.

The month before the protests erupted, Israel had ramped up attacks on the Iranian-backed terrorist group, Hezbollah. In December 2025, Israeli Defense Forces carried out 40 airstrikes, killing high-ranking Hezbollah operatives.

“Iran was as weak as it has ever been at the beginning of this year,” Harding said.

“So if you’re going to try to drive them back to the table, make real concessions or push a regime collapse, now was a good time to do it,” she explained. “Plus, Israel knew that they had a friend in the White House that was open to this kind of thing.”

What does the U.S. want to accomplish?

While its first iteration failed, American leadership wants Iran to sign a memorandum of understanding that stops the fighting, allows free passage through the Strait of Hormuz and gets Iran to give up their nuclear ambitions.

Asked for her outlook on the negotiations, Harding said, “I am by nature an optimistic person, but I’m also a trained intelligence analyst, which means I have to take a sort of hard-eyed view of the world.”

“The optimistic part of me says that the Iranians have suffered a lot in the last year and probably do want an agreement. The intel analyst part of me says, ‘But they are famous — and I mean famous — for taking negotiations and squeezing every last drop of value out of them.’”

Harding said she expects that the U.S. and Iran will negotiate as they continue to exchange fire through October.

However, following American midterm elections in November, “Trump will have very little incentive to be restrained,” Harding said.