Saying that America will be out of Iran in couple weeks, Trump demonstrates hesitation to start ground operation. In two weeks invasion you get jump in your casualties and no chance to change anything on the ground.
“Iran is responding to the threat of a ground operation on its soil by stepping up defenses around its biggest oil port, while threatening to attack a wider array of targets around the Persian Gulf and launching a mass recruitment drive reminiscent of its 1980s war with Iraq.
The steps come as President Trump has ordered thousands of Marines and Airborne troops to the Middle East. While the president hasn't said he plans to put boots on the ground, the deployments would give the U.S. more options for ground assaults or raids, and they have set off preparations and a wave of new threats from Iran.
In a Wednesday prime-time address, the president assured the public that the U.S. would eventually end the war with Iran and that the Strait of Hormuz would "open up naturally" thereafter. But Trump also pledged to hit Iran "extremely hard" in the coming weeks, sending oil prices surging 11% to a near four-year high. Stocks were mixed, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average lower and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes slightly higher.
The U.S. military struck the B1 Bridge, which links Tehran to neighboring Karaj on Thursday, a senior U.S. official said. The attack was part of a larger U.S. effort to sever military resupply routes, the official said.
Analysts and people familiar with Iranian military tactics said the country is gearing up for a fierce fight that could give it the chance to inflict more casualties than it can against the U.S. and Israel's dominant air forces.
Tehran is also mobilizing its population in ways that seek to harness the spirit of the 1980s war with Iraq. They include drives to recruit millions of Iranians including children.
Iran is hardening defenses on Kharg Island, Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the parliament's National Security Commission, told the legislature's news agency this week following a visit to the oil export hub and possible focus of any ground operation. Steps include boosting guided-missile systems, laying mines along the coastline and booby-trapping facilities, an Iranian official said.
Military analysts said tunnels have likely been carved into many of the islands, which Iran is preparing to defend with missiles and other munitions.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have demonstrated the use of wire-guided first-person view drones, which are possessed in greater numbers by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, posing a potent threat to any U.S. troops.
The regime has signaled its defense will also involve spreading more pain around the region to dramatically raise the price of any attack. Tehran, which has shut off most Gulf oil exports and hit facilities and airports, has told its neighbors it would expand its targets to offshore oil platforms if its islands are invaded, Iranian and Arab officials said. It has also threatened to hit vital infrastructure like power plants and desalination facilities.
"Iran intends to make any U.S. landing as costly and politically unsustainable as possible," said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. "I expect Iran will try to swarm and inflict pain through drones first and then widening its retaliation to its neighbors."
Military analysts, including the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, said Iran has around one million active and reserve troops. Among them are around 190,000 of the Revolutionary Guard's fighters.
While the bulk of the country's forces are undertrained and equipped with inadequate arms that sometimes date back decades, they have the benefit of Iran's mountainous terrain and years of working with regional militias in asymmetric fights against Israel and the U.S.
Forces deployed along Iran's coastline have more extensive exposure to armed operations than those in the country's interior, which hasn't seen direct combat since the war with Iraq.
The Revolutionary Guard's navy -- which includes hundreds of small, fast boats armed with missiles, torpedoes and mines -- has for years harassed vessels in the Persian Gulf and has intensified such attacks during the current conflict.
Analysts weighing possible U.S. ground operations focus on an invasion of Kharg island, Iran's main export terminal, in a move to seize the country's oil. Other possible missions include taking Iranian islands in the strait like Abu Musa, which is claimed by the United Arab Emirates, or a special forces raid to capture Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium.
The U.K. accused Iran on Thursday of holding the world's economy hostage as diplomats from more than 40 countries, but not the U.S., held talks on ways to press Tehran to reopen the strait.
Chris Long, a former British Navy officer in the Gulf, said he expects Iran to launch ballistic missiles and drones from military sites it has on Qeshm island in the strait or Bushehr, the closest onshore port to Kharg, though it wouldn't be limited to those sites.
On the islands and from the nearby shores, Iranian troops in fortified tunnels would pound invading forces with cheap FPV drones and shoulder-mounted air defense missiles, said former Russian air force officer Gleb Irisov, who worked closely with Iranian forces when he was deployed in Syria.
"There are no half-measures there," Irisov said. "The U.S. needs to land over 100,000 troops on the whole shoreline to defend and protect these islands and the strait. All other ways will end up in massive American casualties."
Any U.S. operation to seize Iranian islands is more likely to further destabilize the strait than secure it, said Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst close to the Iranian government.
The government is also tightening up the home front. A resident in Isfahan said balaclava-clad security forces had set up new checkpoints in the central Iranian city and nearby towns over the weekend.
On Sunday, Iran launched a campaign called "Janfada," or "Sacrifice," to recruit volunteers to fight U.S. forces, according to a text message sent to mobile subscribers in Iran. The Revolutionary Guard also said it is conducting a campaign to recruit volunteers as young as 12 to provide support services like cooking and medical care as well as to staff checkpoints.
It is hard to know how many Iranians would join such campaigns. Whatever the number, an invasion is likely to draw a nationalist response from across the country's divided population.” [1]
1. Iran Girds Against U.S. Ground Threat. Faucon, Benoit. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 03 Apr 2026: A1.
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