Will US send ground troops to Iran?

Special forces or full on invasion?

I wouldn't be surprised if there's ground troops to secure Straits of Hormuz. But we're not full-on invading Iran.

Not a chance. Iran is much much bigger georaphy than Iraq. And now all countries are better prepared for their traditional foes than bygone era. US has done a misadventure thinking it is the middle East of early 2000. No now everyone is prepared thanx to Russia and China taking turns to equip traditional foes. Even though the Indian media did not say outright but even India and Pakistan war last year was a tough one for India. It was no easy victory. Rather there was no victory. Just ceasefire. Now everyone is prepared.

They already are aren't they?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15643983/Trump-depl...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/why-th...

https://archive.is/uVFSV

I think it will come down to the government's tolerance for casualties. This has not been a, erm, popular subject since ‘Nam but people forget too easily. If they think they’ll profit from it, they’ll throw them in. They’re NPC’s after all, not their kids.

It might be a good thing to resolve the crisis - just take over entire coastline to some depth where the first easily defendable natural barrier occurs, throw all locals out of there and make sure no one can infiltrate - then threat to shipping will be gone.

This will get flagged for being political.

It seems like something will have to give and no party is ready to give, therefore IMHO more escalation is ahead. US and Israel appear to have revitalized and legitimized Iran's murderous islamic regime so they don't seem to like will fold.

Put yourself in their shoes and consider that you don't like your government much and your country has been attacked by someone unserious and not trustworthy with open interests of taking away the resources of your country together with a nation that recently exterminated 100K people who are mostly civilians and their leader is due for trail for war crimes and genocide. In the case of their victory, do you consider what follows really will be a better deal than what you got with your government? I don't think that the majority will say yes to this. Iran isn't going to give, they will take the pounding until the attackers can't do it anymore. It's huge country(as much as France, Germany and Spain combined) with 90M people, they can take a lot of pounding.

Put yourself in Israel's shoes, you have great ambitions and you don't hold yourself from waging wars and killing however many people you like, the population doesn't punish you and you do all that on someone else's dime. Would you hold back? I don't think so, Israel isn't going to give.

Put yourself in US shoes, for some reason you are fully invested in Israel's ambitions, you are powerful and rich and the population doesn't really punish you for wars no matter the outcomes. The elections are years away, you can enrich yourself and people around you with betting on markets with insider information, you can profit from this in so many ways and if you want to feel good about yourself you can expose yourself only to people who like you no matter what you do and if you stop now you will be a loser and it wouldn't change what people say to you and my reduce your importance. So no, I don't think that US, specifically trump will give.

If no one is giving, the only way forward is escalation. Troops on the ground, nuclear attacks, attempt of genocide through starvation, chemical attacks - I think everything is on the table.

From what I read, it seems like USA will attempt and maybe take with ground operation some island on the Iran shores that is apparently very important infrastructure. Do you think that Iranians will be like "oh no, the buffoon and the genocidals took over our highly lucrative pipeline terminal, maybe we should give the rest of our resources to them and let them govern us"? I don't think so, which means later there will be large scale ground operation - unless someone stops Trump or Netanyahu.

PS: You might not agree with the "unserious and not trustworthy buffoon" and the genocide phrases but most of the world agree, especially in Europe. Only in Hungary and Romania the US and Trump image is in the net positive. Check out the numbers.

Yes. 5000 marines for now but they will ultimately have to send more if a goal is regime change. They will also need more to carefully breach and clear the deep bunkers that the bunker buster ordinance can not penetrate likely also containing tripwires. There will also need to be some to patrol the shorelines of the straight, a lot more. IRGC are 200K highly trained zealot soldiers.

It's likely. Actual troops will be a more attractive target than commercial ships for Iran to send drones at. Dead Americans don't cause the markets to drop. And ultimately, "line goes up" is the only moral that politically matters to this regime.

(Also I'd be highly surprised if they haven't run the numbers and calculated scores for which specific units contain the most non-citizens, new citizens, and other untermensch)