IRAN WAR: Is a ground invasion next?

As the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran approaches its first month, the question many analysts are now asking is whether the conflict could escalate beyond airstrikes. With thousands of U.S. troops moving into the region and growing speculation about operations around the Strait of Hormuz, talk of a possible ground invasion is no longer hypothetical. 

In this episode of Conflicts of Interest, Clionadh Raleigh and Bron Mills unpack the headlines dominating the media: Trump’s ultimatums over the Strait of Hormuz, escalating strikes on energy infrastructure, and rumours of a new phase of the war. Could a ground operation actually happen — and if so, what would it look like?

Drawing on ACLED’s real-time conflict data, they explore:

•  why airstrikes alone may not achieve strategic objectives 
•  what a limited ground operation in southern Iran or around key maritime chokepoints might involve 
•  how control of global energy routes is shaping the war 
•  and why the search for a “silver bullet” in modern conflicts almost always fails. 

They also examine the wider ripple effects already unfolding — from protests across the world to attacks and tensions emerging far beyond the Middle East.

Because if this war has shown anything so far, it’s that escalation rarely follows the script — and there is no quick end in sight.

For more conversations like this, subscribe to Conflicts of Interest and watch the full episode on YouTube. 

Conflicts of Interest: https://www.youtube.com/@ConflictsOfInterestACLED

📱 Did you know you can follow Conflicts of Interest on TikTok?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So like I said, there's a real contradiction in this conflict, which is that given how much the Iranian infrastructure and persons and central command have been degraded and destroyed, why is it still so able to continue like this?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Conflicts of interest brought to you by ACLED.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome back to another edition of Conflicts of Interest. I am your host, and um I am the founder and director of ACLED, and I'm here with the wonderful Bron Mills, who is going to guide us through another week in our Iran conflict.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah, well, thank you for having me back again. And as far as the media goes, which is my thing, why I'm here at the end of the day, there's been some pretty spicy headlines that have jumped out at me, certainly over the last 24 hours. So the Telegraph, they warned that Keir Starmer is putting British lives at risk by backing the US Israeli strikes. The Guardian leading with Trump's ultimatum, of course, that 48-hour deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Otherwise, the US will obliterate its power plants. And then the U-turn on that, just as we hit record today, that those strikes have been postponed after so-called productive talks, even though Turan has said no such talks are happening at all. Meanwhile, the Washington Post, they've gone down the Battle of Homu's angle again. And this is all as thousands of US Marines are on their way to the region from Japan, and people asking whether this points to a ground invasion. So a lot going on. How realistic is a ground invasion, firstly?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

It's not unrealistic. I think there has always been, there's always been clear limitations for sole airstrikes, right? And I think that they have reached that point, which it does not mean that the airstrikes will stop. It simply means that certainly Iran's reaction to this conflict and particularly within the Strait of Hormuz has maybe necessitated some of these things become far more important much more quickly. But I will say that the ground invasion is unlikely to be in the straits, right? Because there's been a lot of chat about Cardiq Island and there's been a lot of chat about some of the smaller islands to limit Iran's ability to continue its financing of this conflict through their own oil trade. But in addition, facilitating others coming through the straits at a very, very expensive cost and a promise of alliance, or rather non-alliance to the US and Israel. So both of those things has obviously been an extremely high point for the Iran perspective on the conflict, which is that they feel like they're in a really strong position because of the Straits of Hormuz. And they're not wrong, right? Especially as you just mentioned, because what it's doing to the global economy. If there was a ground invasion, the expectations at the moment is that it would actually be in South Iran and coming up through Pakistan, I believe. And the logic for that is that it's the place where the regime is the weakest and that they could make some better maneuvers at trying to disassemble the IRGC, which we will come back to at every podcast. Disassembling the IRGC or degrading its capability to both attack the Gulf, attack other countries, and also to kind of keep the Iranian population in some sort of a stranglehold, that's going to be the key to any sort of dissension or failure of the regime in Iran. There's a lot of claims about what's going to be the silver bullet, whether it's attacking Kharg Island or whether it's the decapitation strategy and the rest. There is no silver bullet in conflicts like this. So the ground invasion or any sort of limited ground forces are expected to be a continuation of this same effort, which is as as it was discussed by many analysts of Iran, which is targeting, degrading, and potentially seizing key coastal nodes that support Iran's ability to disrupt maritime traffic, right? So that's that would be what it's mainly designed to do when it in fact is going to happen within Iran. But I really will emphasize that the air strikes or the air war to date has been very successful in its attempts to degrade the Iranian regime, but it's not having the results people want. There is no silver bullet, right? And as I was saying to you earlier, the Serbs were bombed for three months before they acquiesced. And then there's also some expectations that the ground strike or the ground invasion will be an attempt to kind of move this on in Iran. But Iran is nowhere near, I think, the point where it looks to be that they are severely degraded internally, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

And there's lots of reports about how Iran could or has been preparing for a kind of defense to a ground invasion for years and years. And then I think the other thing that maybe people don't fully understand is the presence of the US military as a kind of permanent across the Middle East, in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, and some of the other kind of permanent places which kind of targeted, but B presumably there are forces there as well. Like realistically, what does the size of a ground invasion need to be at this point to have any capability on taking on this country that's been braced for a ground invasion scenario for decades?

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah, I mean, uh a ground invasion of Iran is no picnic for sure. But I will say that. So we would have to think, what are the ends, right? If the ends are to somehow control or limit Iranian control of the maritime influence they're having, that could be one thing. If it's to destroy any sort of nuclear areas, that's another. That's that's been a reason that is in the ether about why there would be a ground invasion. It's not to overtake the regime. And I really do want to emphasize that because that is that is a complete disaster to even contemplate that the US or any sort of coalition forces such as they are would go in and try to replace the regime is simply not at all possible. There, you know, there's still this attempt to foment internal dissension within Iran. And we've seen from this weekend and of course beyond, there's been there's been some attempts to say, well, Iranian operations against the Kurdish insurgent groups are ongoing, which means that they fear that that's going to be one element of some sort of internal dissension. Iran's representative in the UN was complaining that Jordan and Pakistan have somehow become involved as sites through which attacks are being launched at Iran. A very, very consistent and unfortunately pervasive system of internal control that's still operational in Iran. You know, they beheaded three young men, I believe, last week for their role in the January protest. So the the internal dissension is still ongoing. Just so everybody's clear, an internal invasion by the US will is not designed to help out Iranians under suppression or the repression of the IRGC and of course the paramilitary groups. That's not designed for, that's not what an internal invasion would be designed to do.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

So the other side then that I mentioned briefly earlier was this kind of 48-hour ultimatum deadline that Trump had put on to today. He's saying that there's a postponement around that, and all we'll attack your biggest power plants and then actually, no, don't worry, we won't. And there's quite a lot of game playing in the public eye going on at the moment. The two headlines that kind of came out at the same time as we hit record today were, you know, Trump saying he's backtracked because of those productive talks, and then Turan coming out saying we haven't had any talks. What's that about? Is that another are we gonna have another propaganda conversation?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

So, yeah, so it's all propaganda on all sides, right? Um, they're they're got quite a production line of it. But what this is about is about what's called horizontal escalation, which is that there has been an escalation in terms of attacking the energy sites. Horizontal escalation is about moving that into, for example, civilian infrastructure and water and communications and electricity and all the things that are helping this regime simply continue from day to day. That is what this means. So there are reports that indicate that things like cyber attacks on Iran's infrastructure have already affected water, which we had talked about, I think, last week with desalinization, et cetera. And then so this reinforces, of course, that there is going to be an increased targeting of civilian systems and infrastructure in order to kind of increase that pressure, right? Which is that Iran is kind of acting at the moment that it has total control over what's happening because of its control of Humus, but it doesn't. And of course, we're likely to see eventually the disassembly from the top down, but also from the bottom up, and that's what this is an attempt to do. So I wouldn't worry about Trump saying it's going to be 36 hours or 48 hours because he has a very fluid sense of time, right? And and a job to do. So he will probably try to make sure that the military is doing it.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

That's a nice way of putting it, fluid sense of time. There has been a lot, I mean, it's they're quite catchy when there's these, you know, deadlines and the ultimatums, but yeah, it it doesn't often come to anything.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

You know what he loves? He loves uh 14 days, 12, 14 days. That's like his favorite unit of time. And so he's used that a lot in in previous references to other leaders or countries that he's interested in. And for some reason, it's always four, no matter how many other ways he puts it. It's I think it's typically four. So if he says a date, you're in the bullseye. And there's 48 hours on this occasion. So is the pressure on or something? I wonder if there's like a ratio that I could then say like it's gonna be in the next six minutes, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

I'm sure we could work that out. So we'll talk about this horizontal escalation then. How far do you think each side is willing to take that? Because obviously it's not immediately what you think of when you hear the Middle East is at war, or you think of the explosions and the strikes and all those things. And then as they get a little bit more strategic, maybe more complex, these things that that maybe don't immediately occur to people that are happening. Is there a threshold where these things have been taken too far? I mean, the the there was a rumor as well, wasn't there, about um cutting off all communication lines across the Strait of Hormuz, like the impact that that would have. Huge line to cross.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

So it's interesting because of course I don't think that Iran has those red lines anymore. UAE referred to the regime in Iran as terrorist recently, which indicates that it really has broken a lot of the expected boundaries or the expected ways in which they would have mitigated their actions for their neighbors, for their future engagements. They don't have that anymore. So on the US side, in previous administrations, certainly it's been U.S. casualties that have that have thrown things into kind of disarray when it comes to plans and how far the US would go with them. I don't think that that is a concern here, not just because thankfully there have not been a lot of US casualties, although there have been some. It's really more about how much pressure is Trump willing to take on the economy, right? And so he came out this weekend, and one thing he did say that was interesting is he was just like, you know, something the US doesn't even really use the straits. So it's other people's business to try to keep that open. And I and I thought that was wishful thinking, but it was interesting because he was basically saying, well, we've got the benefit of being quite far away. So, you know, whenever we choose to leave, we can, which indicates that their lines kind of probably move all the time depending on who's putting pressure on him either to stay or to go. Israel's lines, I think, are a lot more well-defined in the sense that they now have a conflict happening, or conflicts happening on at least three fronts with Iran, within Gaza, and of partially the West Bank, although less so, and then of course within southern Lebanon. So it has real pressures about the need to kind of make some clear, positive, reinforcing conclusions about this particular conflict.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Yeah, I mean, listen, it's it's impossible to talk about the Middle East without talking about the fact that it has a huge amount of the world's most important resource. And that resource tends to dictate the health of the global economy, for better or for worse, right? Do I think the US went in because of oil? Not really. I mean, I think that certainly it has an influence in the sense that so much of the economic health that the US is in in many ways trying to renationalize from the global economy is affected by this. But I think this had a lot to do with the fact that there was legacy movements here, legacy influence about having to deal with Iran. I think that Trump was probably one of the more um amenable US presidents of late to think that there was a military solution to this problem, um, for which Israel agreed with. In fact, you know, in many ways, Bibi Netanyahu is also a particular type of leader who thinks that this had a military solution because other prime ministers in Israel have not thought that there was a military solution to the Iran problem. So this is all coming together in this moment. And I will say this, although I know people think it's a bit trite, but I think within the US, right, they have an enormous, extremely well-funded military. And I think that the current Secretary of Warslash Defense believes that it should be used, right? And that can lead to catastrophic mistakes, or it can lead to, you know, displays of skill that we saw in Venezuela, for example. But this is much more likely to lead to a long drawn-out conflict of attrition that is not in the US's best interest. So it'll be interesting to see how those arguments get, let's say, repurposed or reformed in order to justify that.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

And it's interesting you mentioned about the use of the military in that way, because it's under the same umbrella, he was gonna end all wars.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

They never bought that for one second. No, I don't know who did. Well, you know, I think that people were like, well, you know, he's really into peace. And I thought anybody who wants to kind of wield this type of power without, you know, the constraints of the system, whether it's Congress or judicial restraint or whatever, they're not interested in that. And I will plug a program from the 1970s, I think it was 1972, that I've mentioned in a previous Raleigh uh report newsletter, which is a program called Warlords by a British academic, and he just stands there for six episodes and talks about different warlords from World War II. And what he basically claims is that there World War II was a unique time in which many of the either regional or global powers had one man making decisions, right? And that man was willing to make conflict decisions or willing to wield violence in order to see his vision or his defense of the state or whatever come into being. And we're in that time now. Several of the regional and global leaders that we're talking about are preparing for and willing to use huge amounts of violence in order to reshape this world in the image they wish. And that's what we're seeing. So I agree, of course, that the economy is super important. It's the first order effect of what's happening here. But this is deeper than that. This is about fundamental geopolitical change and how this center point of that had to shift in order for the rest of these changes to occur.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah, and when you mention those changes in terms of the like wider conflict escalation, we've heard lots about Iran attacking the Kurdish anti-regime insurgent groups in Iraq. And then we've heard some unverified reports that Jordanian territory has been used for attacks on Iran and that Pakistan allowed the airspace to be used during an attack on Iran as well. Not to mention the UAE describing Iran's leadership as terrorists, as you brought up earlier. And so we're starting to see those kind of shifts in that like neighbor structure as well. Is there any of the kind of movement in that regional, I don't suppose you'd call them allies even, but that regional space that's come as a surprise at this stage?

SPEAKER_00 17:29

I think that the Gulf is very good at figuring out how they can work together to have some sort of a shared, if not, you know, can be divisive, but it's going to be a shared kind of positive economic present and future. And that has broken down a bit. I mean, in a talk last week, somebody was saying, you know, the Saudis believe that they can kind of talk this out eventually, but they need a more degraded regime before that they can make these moves. And I think that we're moving past the point where people think that this is salvageable in that way because of the threats, the continued threats that that Iran has openly engaged in with its neighbors. So, like I said, there's a real contradiction in this conflict, which is that given how much the Iranian infrastructure and persons and central command have been degraded and destroyed, why is it still so able to continue like this? And I think something that you mentioned in your earlier point is useful here, which is that they've been preparing for it, certainly. And there's been there's been kind of an all-out strategy, which is that if we're not going to use this now, then it can never be used. We won't be around to see it. But because people have been expecting, again, the dissembly from the bottom, I've been thinking, and again, this is simply a guess, right? That the mosaic strategy that we've previously talked about, which was the decentralization of the IRGC and the military capabilities, is maybe being used internally rather than externally. And so many of the central commands and many of these decisions about regional engagements is still happening centrally. But all of the significant manpower that is available to Iran through their through their systems, through their very, very large security systems, is being used internally to make sure that there is no dissension. There is no kind of rupture at the bottom, which would in fact have a massively destabilizing effect on the regime. That's just my thought of the day.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah. Well, it makes sense because the other thing is the um blurring of lines, I think some people have been referring it to it as about what the what the targets are, who's targeting what. And the, you know, whether it's energy strikes uh or we're looking at military targets and then where that crossover is with civilian targeting. And then the strike on Diego Garcia over the weekend, you know, double the distance that anyone thought Iran, Iran's um long-range missiles could go. It's like a like a symbol of, you know, look what we can do. And so again, was that about the the target or the strategy? And so, with all of the speculation about different kinds of intelligence and tech pieces in that, like it's just seems like such a mess at that decision-making stage.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Yeah, I would I would certainly agree with that. And let me just go over some of the patterns that we've detected from the daily data. Nohad has put these together because she's wonderful. So said by visually comparing the maps of a strike of the strikes launched by Israel in this third week, there have been a few more distinct locations. So on the 20th of March, Iran targeted the US UK Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean, which was the first time Iran launched missiles that went beyond 2,000 kilometers. And I will say that this could be because international efforts to counter this are are certainly happening. The UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands have signaled readiness to support maritime security operations. That's important. On the 19th of March, a strike hit an oil refinery in Saudi Aromco in Almedina, which is of course closer to the Red Sea. And I bring that up because there has been some indications, of course, that what's happening on the Red Sea is quite important. And there's been some movement around Djibouti. There's been buildup in Djibouti, which is interpreted as that area being a second operational axis potentially for the US and Israel, who has been scoping areas near Berbera in Somaliland, slash Somalia, in order to build up their abilities to operate from there. So if the US was building up Red Sea related work, the objective there would be to preempt what they believe the Houthis might do, or of course to just provide another way of getting oil out in this economy moving. In the Babel Landub, which would take off some of the pressure from these global maritime routes, right? So this could reinforce that there is a much more targeted way about trying to deal with this first order problem, which is the control of the strait, the second order problem, which is the ways in which the global economy is being seized, and of course, like how the Gulf can try to keep something going while dealing with this problem that is not going away.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think there's also the rumors about the speculation with the tech companies playing a role, and lots of questions about how much of this war is actually happening kind of behind the scenes in in ways people can't see.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

So I'm I I'm not too sure about that, because I'm usually about obviously the bullets. But but I will say that this discussion about the cyber attacks on the water civilian electricity infrastructure within Iran certainly indicates that everything's being thrown at it, right? I mean, like with all wars at the moment, you know, whether it's Ukraine or with this one, what we're seeing effectively is that you have the same technology as you've always had, you know, seizures or attempts to stop the flow of materials getting in and out of very, very vulnerable geographic areas. And then you have this hyper-tech, hyper-sophisticated way in which this war is being fought to kind of um restrict or to create obstacles for, you know, parties. And then and then you have everything in between. You've got the cheap drones, you've got the drone swarms, you've got sophisticated missiles, you've got talks, you've got potential ground invasion. These modern conflicts can look very similar to how conflicts have always looked, with the addition of these attempts to make sure that any advantages that come through tech are are quickly eradicated. But, you know, again, we're not even a month in, so I wouldn't there's no silver bullet and there's certainly no end in sight.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

So obviously I'm I do media relations here. And when I started looking at the relationship with news and war, I was so drawn in to everything around the Vietnam War and how the states responded and and how kind of shocking it all was. And then as that's kind of developed over time and those media's being used kind of strategically, right, to play into all of these bits. So I was catching up on some stuff in that little nerd space of the internet that I love over the weekend. And there was a weapons expert who was kind of having a look at how people are talking about weapons and how that works, and he finished what he was saying by saying, I don't know. This was recorded before all of this kicked off. He said, I don't know what World War III is gonna look like, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Interesting. Well, they're certainly useful, and we've seen, you know, we've seen it in Ukraine especially, there's a real mix of an almost medieval strategy of a frontline and really, a really sophisticated tech sector that is producing a huge number of weapons. So I would say that all references to war somehow, you know, being treated like a video game are only a partial truth. They're certainly an advancement, although uh I mean it's up to others to determine whether or not they consider it a positive or negative advancement. But no wars are ended through the you know the video game tech ways. And so I think that there's there's no question in my mind that there will be some form of a ground invasion or a secondary front opening up in the around the Red Sea. And there's also no question in my mind that the key to everything here is what's going to happen inside Iran, right? The economy can certainly reform itself even in the short term, although it may have to do so in the long term. But those are the fundamentals here that we need to keep our eyes on.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Okay, great. So then, as you say, we're approaching almost a month of this, and we've talked a lot about first and second order. Um, so so far, in the first two weeks, I think we saw over 1,500 protests across the world in an anti- and anti-their action perspective. And then we are also seeing from ACLA data, actually, the there's about eight suspected pro-Iranian attacks across Europe that have kind of started to raise their heads a little bit. And then conversations about the Philippines and them importing like 98% of their energy from Gulf and India and how that's kind of playing out, not to mention the cyber attacks. Are there any other kind of second order things that you're kind of expecting or or waiting for? Or would anything kind of catch you off guard at the moment, or is it a space of anything goes?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

So a little bit of a space of anything goes. I think we should think about these as kind of like reactions, normal reactions, especially, for example, from pro-Iran militias in the region and how they're acting. That's that was to be expected, with the exception of the Houthis, who seem to be holding back at this moment. Then there are opportunities, right? And opportunities are how groups that have no relationship to this conflict directly, can take the moment of distraction or economic collapse or whatever it is that they think are going to help their own cause and seize it, right? And I think that terrorism, especially within the US and Europe, has become a much more likely opportunity that certain groups, such as ISIS in particular, would seize at this moment than I would have said two months ago, three months ago, six months ago, right? So I think that we all need to be prepared for these additional types of threats that will have um risen. There's also a huge number of protests, as you've mentioned, not just about pro or anti-this movement, because there's a lot of pro, right? There's a lot of Iranians who believe this is the only way that this regime can be destroyed. There's been a huge rise, and a continued rise, in fact, and a huge surge in anti-Semitism, which I think is fed by this notion that Israel somehow has tricked the US into this. This is a surreal enormous problem in all places in the world. But then there are also protests about the economic strife, which you've just mentioned, whether it's the Philippines or Sri Lanka or elsewhere, where oil is fueling a lot of economies just being able to function, let alone it being, you know, the main thing that's traded in and out. It is necessary for a lot of economies to function. And so when there is a seizure in that, or where there's a drastic increase in its cost, things stop or things cease, and there is going to be public reactions to it.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

So just quickly then to round off, we mentioned briefly earlier this idea of a kind of magic wand that maybe lots of people think that the states are just kind of holding on to and that magic solution or silver bullet, like we said.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Is there one? No. No, there isn't for any conflict ever. I mean, I think people were really, really pretty delighted with how the situation in Venezuela went. And the fact that it went without too many hitches is is fantastic. And obviously the people of Venezuela are in a lot better position now. I think they would they would agree with that than they were when Maduro was in power. But that was not representative of how almost any conflict goes. No one wants to be drawn into a long war of attrition, and yet they get drawn into those things. And it's because conflict changes form and it changes its intensity and it changes its participants and its targets and all the rest of it. It it constantly kind of evolves and moves, and people find it very hard to extricate themselves.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Well, thanks for the for the chat today. And as usual, I'll keep my eyes on the headlines. Thanks, everybody. Bye bye. You've been listening to Conflicts of Interest, brought to you by Accled with Professor Cleena Raleigh and Dr. Katrina Dowd. New episodes are available every fortnight. Follow Accled socials for more in the meantime.