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U.S. Army General (retired) Wesley Clark, a former NATO Commander, estimates that it would require 100,000 combat Marines to seize the Straight of Hormuz, to effectively open the Straight and restore maritime commercial shipping.

Gen. Wesley Clark: This is how Iran war could end, but not the best way A unilateral halt would leave America as the loser, unable to accomplish its objectives. That would undercut American deterrence in Asia and Europe.

As of today, the U.S. has spent over $22 billion in taxpayer money on an unconstitutional, aimless war in Iran and Lebanon. 13 Americans are dead — hundreds wounded — 850 Lebanese civilians killed, and 1,400 Iranian civilians killed. And for what?

For America, at least, the lives, talent, energy, dollars and resources would be better committed to the improvement of everyday American life — particularly in areas of healthcare, education, affordable housing, and much more. Yet, the White House is committing so much of America’s potential to an aimless — and seemingly endless — venture in the Middle East, once again.

Fareed’s latest op-Ed sums up the major strategical error the U.S. has committed, in the title — “Iran is an imperial trap. America walked right in.” He compares how Britain made the same mistake a century ago — providing warning to us, today.

Excerpt from Fareed Zakaria’s Washington Post op-Ed —

Over the course of those decades, roughly from the 1880s through the 1920s, Britain found itself responding to instability, nasty regimes and power vacuums all over Asia and Africa. It sent troops and asserted control in places like Sudan and Somalia, Iraq and Jordan. These missions all seemed compelling at the time but had the effect of keeping London distracted by an endless series of local crises in peripheral parts of the world, often at great cost. The Iraqi rebellion of 1920 required more than 100,000 British and Indian troops and tens of millions of pounds to put down — at a time when the estimated total budget for education in Britain was roughly the same as the cost of that Iraqi “excursion.”

While British leaders passionately debated their strategy in Mesopotamia, they fundamentally neglected the real economic and technological challenges that they faced. As Britain battled with tribes in the Middle East and Africa, across the Atlantic, the U.S. was quietly building the most advanced industrial economy the world had ever seen. In Europe after World War I, a defeated Germany steadily rebuilt its industry and a highly mechanized military apparatus. Britain, distracted by the chaotic periphery, was being systematically surpassed at its core. Over time, the result was that Britain collapsed as the world’s leading power.

America today is succumbing to some of the same imperial temptations. It responds to genuine crises in the Middle East. It sees a logic that is political, military and moral in responding. But ultimately, grand strategy is about prioritizing finite resources. The U.S. does not possess infinite political capital, bandwidth, military capacity or economic resilience. Every airstrike on Tehran, every anti-drone interceptor shot over the Persian Gulf and every hour administration officials spend debating the nuances of Iranian political succession represents energy diverted from the true tectonic challenges defining the 21st century.

The primary, indispensable role of the U.S. is to anchor the global system against the revisionist ambitions of Beijing and Moscow. China is not getting bogged down in Middle Eastern quagmires; it is relentlessly investing in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, solar and wind power, batteries and robots — the technologies that will determine the balance of global power. Russia remains fiercely committed to disrupting European security and undermining Western democracies through hybrid political-military warfare that has proved hard to detect and even harder to defeat. But while Moscow and Beijing challenge the basic architecture of America’s world order, Washington is preparing, once again, to spend blood and treasure policing the Middle East and trying to pick the leaders of one of its countries.

History suggests that great powers often succumb to the allure of “small wars” precisely because they offer the illusion of quick, political and moral victories. Unfortunately, these tactical successes rarely translate into strategic gains, and more often serve as the first step toward long-term exhaustion.

Even if the intervention in Iran succeeds, it would require that America get deeply involved in the fate of that country. Is that ultimately where America’s time and energy would be best devoted over the next decade? The lesson from Britain’s role is clear: Great powers do not usually fall because they are conquered by foreign armies. They fall because they overextend themselves on the periphery while neglecting the core.
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Opinion | Iran is an imperial trap. America walked right in. Trump’s decision to return to the Middle East echoes the strategic folly that undid Britain.

For the last two months I have warned that war against Iran would be catastrophic and strategically disastrous. Before the war, many tried to debate me, urging that war was necessary — that U.S. strikes would somehow magically turn Iran into a happy, dandy democracy. Yet now, since this disastrous war started, those voices seem to be changing the subject.

Here’re excerpts from Nate Swanson’s recent Foreign Affairs essay—

Confronted with a truly existential threat, Iran has mounted a much more deliberate, decentralized, and effective response than many expected, striking not only Israeli territory and U.S. diplomatic and military installations but also civilian targets throughout the Persian Gulf, including airports, hotels, and energy infrastructure.
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But [U.S. President Trump] cannot force surrender on a government that refuses it. Even after the heavy damage to Iran’s military, the regime that Khamenei put in place has powerful incentives to pursue continued conflict, and it retains a variety of tools to sustain a war of attrition.

The war is thus barreling toward an inflection point at which all the potential options are bad. To agree to a cease-fire, Tehran will almost certainly demand assurances that the United States will constrain future Israeli strikes on Iran, Trump retains substantial leverage over Netanyahu because of Israel’s dependence on U.S. military assistance, but it is still a huge ask. Very soon, the U.S. president will face a choice between doubling down on an unpopular war or, to end it, wresting a concession from Israel that Iran could frame as a triumph.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Despite the tactical brilliance of its joint offensive with Israel, strategic success remains elusive for the United States. Trump went to war against a country of 92 million people with no clear plan for what would happen after the guns fell silent. He initially declared that victory would be achieved if the Iranian people rose up and dismantled the Islamic Republic themselves—an extraordinary and unrealistic request. The regime’s horrific crackdown in January produced no meaningful defections from the regime or security services, and government leaders have already shown they are willing to kill as many of their own people as needed to stay in power.

In 2023, while serving as Iran director at the National Security Council, I attended a diplomatic meeting with an Iranian official in the aftermath of a major protest. Surprisingly, the official acknowledged strong opposition to the Islamic Republic. Yet he cautioned that the United States failed to understand that an equal number of Iranians were prepared to die for the regime and pointed out that most Iranians just wanted a better day-to-day life. Although he didn’t break it down into numbers, I began thinking of this as the 20-20-60 ratio. Twenty percent of Iranians are dedicated to the downfall of the Islamic Republic, 20 to its preservation, and the remainder to a better life.

I long assumed that after Khamenei died, the Iranians who wanted a better life would join forces with those strongly opposed to the Islamic Republic and force the country’s leaders down a different path than the one the supreme leader had charted. But the bitter irony is that the U.S. and Israeli approach to the recent war afforded Khamenei a martyr’s death—a gift to the regime, as it diverted attention away from the Islamic Republic’s failures. It elevated Khamenei’s hard-line son and turned much of the nation’s focus toward surviving an external assault. All these outcomes only marginalize the silent majority of Iranians who just want a measure of well-being.

Moving forward, Iran does not need to score major military successes every day. The regime only needs to inflict enough periodic damage to keep regional partners, markets, and the American public jittery. Despite catastrophic damage to the Iranian navy and other branches of the military, periodic drone attacks on tankers attempting to traverse the Strait of Hormuz are probably enough to keep traffic snarled in a shipping channel responsible for a fifth of global oil supply.
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Trump appears more focused on burnishing his legacy than on any specific objective. His references to his “little excursion” in Iran echo a boast in 1898 by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay that his country’s four-month conflict with Spain had been a “splendid little war” that demonstrated American power and glory. At some point, the toll on the U.S. arsenal and the global economy will demand that Trump bring the show to a close. Keen to avoid Hezbollah’s fate, however, the Islamic Republic is not seeking an off-ramp. Iranian leaders want to extend the war as long as possible and make the U.S. president less eager for a future conflict.

Trump could continue to prosecute the war in Iran by persisting with his devastating aerial campaign. But this is already yielding diminishing returns, given that the U.S. military has already struck most of its targets. The alternative is to put American boots on the ground. That comes with awful risks and is precisely what Trump, as a presidential candidate, repeatedly pledged never to do. But it may be the only way to ensure an Iranian regime more amenable to his demands. Trump may also consider smaller, more targeted operations related to maritime security or Iran’s nuclear program. But these, too, would pose significant risks to American soldiers and likely prompt retaliation—and there is little chance that they would lead to Iran’s capitulation.
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Alternatively, Trump could outsource the war by arming political or ethnic factions that oppose the regime in Tehran. That would be a recipe for disaster: mobilizing the Kurds or any other ethnic separatist group would keep many anti-regime Iranians at home and fragment the opposition. Such a move could result in the deaths of a few more Iranian soldiers, but it would be highly unlikely to meaningfully diminish the regime’s ability to repress internal dissent. It would also risk exacerbating regional conflict and driving mass migration.

That leaves one option: try to achieve a formal cease-fire. Theoretically, of course, Trump could simply declare that the degradation of Iran’s military and the killing of Khamenei constitute victory and walk away. But this is harder than it sounds. He cannot unilaterally stop Tehran from attacking U.S. assets or the Gulf states. Iran would rather fight a protracted war with the United States now than repeated wars with Israel in the coming years. Even if the United States unilaterally withdraws from the fight, if a future Iran-Israel conflict looks inevitable, Iran will likely continue targeting U.S. interests in the region as well as the Gulf states and energy infrastructure.

Iran’s strategic objective now is to impose such high costs on the United States and the Gulf states that Trump will opt for a cease-fire that includes a restriction on future Israeli actions. In essence, Iran wants to force him to choose between Israel’s security interests and the stability of global markets. The bottom line is that the war Trump started has no good ending. And every day it goes on seems to delay a better future for the Iranian people. This is a tragedy that only Khamenei and Trump, together, could engineer.
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https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/2026/03/17/how-americas-war-on-iran-backfired/content.html

Thanks, Sarah! For hosting me on your show and helping magnify the issues that matter to my Anderson community — healthcare, cost of living, rural broadband, and so much more! I really appreciate people like Sarah who sincerely care about people and sharing their stories. It’s connecting with people and caring about them that will build a more hopeful Indiana 🤍
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