Despite leaked reports about top US military officials briefing President Donald Trump on new escalatory and potentially imminent military options against Iran, the current game of chicken will continue for the near future, Israeli and American sources have indicated to The Jerusalem Post.
While the leaks present Trump as being briefed on potential “new” options for attacking Iran so that it will make further concessions, nuclear or otherwise, all of these plans have been on the table since early March and are not new, according to people familiar with the matter.
Despite repeated opportunities to opt for any of the multiple options, Trump has preferred avoiding the additional risks they entail, the sources indicated.
Trump opted for a unilateral ceasefire on April 7, even though he received no assurances of concessions by Iran.
The calculus was relatively simple: Trump was hemorrhaging political support once the war went past its early days of euphoria.
As the days of war became weeks, large majorities of the American public – and even an increasing number of Republicans – opposed the war due to the spike in gas prices.
They also opposed the US fighting for any extended period in the Middle East, which can be framed as a “war of choice” for Washington, although it is more pressing for Israel.
Gas prices are still far above where they were before the war. If they do not decline in the coming months, the Republican Party likely will be hammered during the US midterm elections.
If there is neither war nor chaos in the Middle East in the coming months, however, then the opposition would be less intense in the short term. The prospect of bringing gas prices down in time to impact the November elections remains intact.
Nothing has really changed since Trump decided to end the war with no concessions, and then decided to extend both his deadlines and the ceasefire on two separate occasions without any stable concessions, according to the sources.
In fact, the latest leaks could signal his desperation to secure Iranian concessions before they do anything else.
Even though the negotiations are stalled, Trump thinks the Iranians will make concessions, because the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is pushing their economy to collapse.
Iran is attempting to outwait Trump
The Iranians think they can wait out Trump. Their rationale is that even if the economic harm to Iranians is worse than it is to Americans, they believe their threshold for economic pain, after decades of sanctions, is far higher than Americans’ patience with gas prices.
Trump does not want to go back to a full-scale war, and the game of chicken over Hormuz has not yet moved the Iranians, so he wants to scare them more into blinking, the sources indicated.
The problem is that Trump’s blinking before the Iranians do has spoken louder than these repeated leaks.
Even after the US military’s impressive rescue of its downed F-15 airman from deep within Iranian territory, which required hours of searches and a relatively large-scale special ground forces deployment, Trump has declined to order any further movements of ground forces.
After all, why would he move forward? Senior Israeli and American officials have painted a challenging picture for all of these scenarios.
Although Iran had a general idea where the US airman was during the aforementioned operation, they did not know his exact location.
In contrast, Iran knows exactly where the US would need to use ground forces to achieve certain aims related to Kharg Island or the Strait of Hormuz.
Thus, it would be far more difficult for the US to catch Iran by surprise if it opted for these strategic invasions. The US would be forced to march to an exact spot that its enemy knows of – in stark contrast to the operation for a single US soldier stranded in a concealed area.
For the rescue of the F-15 airman, Iran’s forces could not gather themselves in the right spot, because they did not know where it was. The opposite would be true with Kharg or Hormuz.
True, American forces could target any Iranian soldiers who were out in the open, but the Islamic regime could hide its other soldiers until the perfect moment arises for an ambush. In addition, it knows where it would need to send reinforcements.
Once American troops are in play, it would likely be challenging for US aerial units to target Iran’s reinforcements as they race into the area, lest they harm their fellow Americans.
Secondly, the 100-man commando force from the airman rescue could be shifted rapidly from place to place with little exposure. In contrast, when thousands of American soldiers are transported on slow naval ships to a specific location, they would likely be more vulnerable to missile and drone strikes while on their way.
Another critical question is how long US forces would need to stay in one location to remove Iranian threats and restore maritime shipping lanes.
In this case, the presumption is far more than hours; it could possibly take weeks or months.
If so, the Islamic regime would have plenty of time to ambush Americans stuck in a stagnant position, whether by use of ground troops or aerial threats.
Even if only a few Iranian drones or cruise missiles evaded US detection, they could damage one or two ships that might try to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. If this occurred, the greater strategic goal of opening the strait would fail despite US successes on the ground.
The last ground operation being discussed – inserting ground forces to secure or destroy Iran’s 60%-enriched uranium deep under rubble at Isfahan and likely additional facilities – would be the hardest one.
Special vehicles designed for heavy digging would need to be brought into the area along with nuclear scientists. A massive number of ground and aerial forces would have to surround them to provide security.
No one knows how long this mission would take, because the Iranians themselves have not yet succeeded in digging out the uranium more than 10 months after Israeli and American attacks on its nuclear sites left them covered in rubble.
Would it take several months? Would it take longer if US forces started digging and then realized they needed to bring in other kinds of equipment? Or could there be a way to more quickly destroy or dilute the uranium?
Regardless of the many scenarios, US ground troops would be in danger for an extended period of time, and there is no guarantee that the mission will succeed.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has tremendous influence on Trump regarding security matters, has opposed such risky moves from the start. This is one of the reasons that these operations did not take place earlier.
The only way that Trump might seriously consider these moves would be if he was fully convinced that he would lose the game of chicken with Iran. In addition, the price of losing that game would have to be larger than the risks that come with such unpredictable moves.
Nevertheless, Trump may reach that stage at some point.
There are additional options, former CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie Jr. told the Post in an interview on April 9.
“Maybe we don’t need to put people on the shore and do not need to occupy” the Straits, he said. “We can just make it impossible on those islands” for Iran to operate.
The US could “control those islands by fire,” McKenzie said. “If the Iranians show up on the island, we kill them. We do intrusive overhead monitoring or carry out temporary raids. We go onto the land to destroy a missile launch site” or other threat, but then leave, and American troops would be less vulnerable to ambushes, compared with leaving a stagnant occupying force in place.
Despite public leaks about re-briefings of long-existing plans, all indications from Israeli and American sources are that Trump is not actually near that stage yet, and that he will likely wait at least a few weeks to see how the game of chicken plays out before considering any risky moves.