Day 29: What could possibly be the U.S. options in Iran?

Peloni:  There has been a great deal of talk of defeatism regarding the Iran war of late.  John Spencer, a foremost expert on urban warfare, provides a serious, meticulous analysis of various paths which might lead towards victory.  In doing so, he makes this notable observation towards the end of this important essay:

“War is not a checklist. It is the alignment of ends, ways, and means under conditions of uncertainty. Options can be sequenced, layered, or applied simultaneously across domains. The United States has not run out of options. It has not even used all of them.”

Make no doubt about it.  This war is not over, and victory is closer to us than is defeat, for now in any event.

John Spencer | Urban Warfare | Mar 29, 2026

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The U.S.-Iran war has been underway for 29 days now. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish real strategic and military expertise from politicized opinion, speculation, and narrative. Too many people jump immediately from where we are today to a full-scale ground invasion. They assume the only option is for U.S. forces to seize Tehran, secure nuclear material by force, destroy a supposed million-man army, and then get pulled into another decades-long nation-building effort or fight a Maoist-style insurgency. That is not analysis. That is shallow thinking rooted in outdated and often biased mental models of war.

President Trump has signaled a 10-day pause on strikes against Iran’s energy infrastructure, now extended to April 6. We are days into that timeline. But the real question is not what has been done. The real question is what options remain.

It is a given that CENTCOM and Israel will continue systematic attacks on Iran’s military system. Iran entered this war with thousands of ballistic missiles, hundreds of launchers, a dispersed drone enterprise, a layered naval capability in the Gulf, remnants of a nuclear enrichment program, and a military industrial base built for redundancy and survivability. That system is being destroyed. But it is not yet eliminated.

At the same time, Israel is targeting something far more important than just military capability. It is targeting the regime’s ability to rule once the bombs stop falling. That means hunting and eliminating political and military leadership. It means degrading the Basij, the regime’s internal enforcement arm. It means targeting checkpoints, intelligence nodes, and internal security infrastructure.

This is not just tactical action. This is strategic pressure applied simultaneously against Iran’s means and its will. Its ability to fight and its ability to govern are being targeted at the same time. That is how you coerce behavior change without occupying a capital.

It is important to anchor any discussion in the stated strategic objectives. As articulated by senior U.S. leaders, the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are: destroy Iran’s missile arsenal and its ability to produce more, dismantle its navy and its ability to threaten global shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

While regime change has been mentioned and questions have been raised about whether it would be good or bad, it is not the declared U.S. objective. Behavior change is. The current regime has been given pathways, including diplomatic proposals, to alter its course. That matters because it shapes the options available. This is not about occupying Tehran. It is about paralyzing the regime, destroying its capabilities, and forcing it to accept new terms.

If the regime collapses under the combined weight of military pressure and its own economic fragility, the United States can still achieve its objectives in a fundamentally different strategic environment. But regime collapse is not required to succeed.

From here, the range of options expands, not contracts.

One option is to strike the regime’s economic center of gravity. Kharg Island handles roughly 85 to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, often between 1.5 and 2 million barrels per day. That oil is the regime’s primary source of hard currency. Seize it, disable it, or destroy export capacity, and you do not just hurt the economy. You paralyze the regime’s ability to fund its military, sustain patronage networks, and maintain internal control.

This matters because the regime has already shown signs of fragility under economic pressure. The January 2026 protests were driven by inflation, banking instability, and the inability to provide basic services, including severe water shortages affecting millions in Tehran. There were even discussions about relocating the capital due to an inability to provide potable water. The regime responded with mass violence, killing over 32,000 civilians in one of the most brutal crackdowns in its modern history. Therefore, economic pressure is not theoretical. It has already brought the regime close to the edge.

Another option is to target the national power grid. Iran’s electricity system is concentrated around major urban hubs. Precision strikes on key substations and transmission nodes can create cascading outages across entire regions. Tehran goes dark.

The regime would be in immediate trouble without power. Command and control, surveillance, communications, and internal security coordination all depend on it. Precision strikes on key substations and transmission nodes can create cascading outages without total destruction of infrastructure. The U.S. has demonstrated that capability in past conflicts.

Cyber operations expand this further. Iran has repeatedly shut down internet access to control its population. That capability can be reversed. Disrupt regime command networks while enabling connectivity for the population through external systems. Information becomes a weapon. Control of narrative, coordination, and awareness shifts away from the regime.

The Strait of Hormuz remains decisive terrain. Roughly 20 percent of global oil supply, about 20 million barrels per day, flows through it. Iran’s strategy has long been to threaten and manipulate that flow.

One option is to move from deterrence to control. Seize or neutralize key islands. Experts have long identified Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb islands as critical terrain controlling access to the Strait. Qeshm Island, sitting along the northern edge, hosts IRGC naval facilities, missile systems, and surveillance infrastructure. These positions enable Iran’s anti-ship missile coverage, fast attack craft operations, and maritime coercion. Controlling or neutralizing these islands would fundamentally alter Iran’s ability to contest the Strait.

Iran has also built a “toll booth” system in the Strait. The IRGC has created a de facto system where ships must be approved, routed through Iranian-influenced lanes, and in some cases pay millions for safe passage. Reports indicate fees reaching up to $2 million per tanker, selective approval based on political alignment, and designated transit corridors near Larak Island under regime control.

The United States and Israel have the capability to systematically dismantle this system. Target the leadership directing it. Destroy the coastal radar, ISR nodes, and command centers enabling it. Eliminate the fast attack craft, drones, and missile batteries enforcing it. Break the system, and you break Iran’s ability to turn a global chokepoint into a regime-controlled revenue and coercion mechanism.

A related option is to interdict Iranian oil exports at sea. Iran exports roughly 1.5 to 2 million barrels per day, much of it through sanctions evasion networks. Stop and divert tankers. Enforce inspections and seizures at scale. This is already happening at a limited level. Scaling it drives regime revenue toward zero. No revenue means no missiles, no proxies, no repression, no functioning state.

Other options shift inward. Iran’s population is over 85 million, young, urban, and repeatedly discontent. Available polling, protest patterns, and observable unrest all suggest that well over 50 percent of the population opposes the regime, and possibly much higher. This is not a solid or stable base of power. The January 2026 protests are a clear signal of that underlying pressure.

Until now, civilians have largely been told to shelter. That could change. Messaging, corridors, and psychological operations could begin to separate the population from the regime’s control mechanisms.

That can be paired with support to internal resistance. Air resupply of weapons, communications, and intelligence directly to resistance groups that may or may not exist. Iran has multiple internal fault lines, ethnic, political, and regional, that have historically produced opposition and unrest. When external pressure aligns with internal resistance, regimes fracture faster, or at least the pressure on the regime increases significantly.

At the same time, strikes can continue expanding beyond traditional military targets. The regime’s control system is a network: leadership, IRGC headquarters, Basij units, police, intelligence services, and repression infrastructure. Target those nodes, and you accelerate the erosion of centralized authority.

History shows pressure creates fractures. Military leaders hedge. Intelligence services fracture. Political elites reposition. Defections occur. Working with defectors multiplies effects far beyond what strikes alone can achieve.

There is also much we do not know. We do not have full visibility into where the regime is strongest or weakest. But indicators matter. Reports of attempts to expand mobilization, including lowering recruitment thresholds to as young as twelve, suggest stress. That is not the behavior of a confident regime.

None of these options exist in isolation. They can be combined.

Destroy Iran’s missile arsenal and production capacity. Dismantle its navy. Continue degrading its nuclear program. Deny its ability to project power beyond its borders. At the same time, paralyze decision-making by targeting leadership and command systems. Apply pressure across military, economic, informational, and political domains simultaneously.

Attack the regime’s means and its will at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously. The objective is to impose multiple dilemmas, more than the regime can handle. Force it into reactive survival. Stretch its decision cycles. Overwhelm its ability to coordinate and control.

War is not a checklist. It is the alignment of ends, ways, and means under conditions of uncertainty. Options can be sequenced, layered, or applied simultaneously.

The United States has not run out of options. It has plenty it has not used, many that no one is talking about or that none of us can fully imagine without access to far more than what exists in the public domain, but could.

Lastly, be careful of analysts who speak in certainties or rely on surface analogies. Iran is not Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq. It is not 1968, 2002, or 2003. The context of each is fundamentally different. The political objectives, from regime behavior change to regime survival, are different. Past wars involved nation building, attempts to create democracy, prolonged fights against insurgencies, and enemies who enjoyed sanctuary outside the operating environment. Those are not the same conditions or objectives at play here. The geography, technology, intelligence, and regional dynamics are different. The options available today are far broader and more precise against the objectives.

We know a lot about what has been struck. We do not fully know what remains. More importantly, we do not know what decisions will be made next by either side. That uncertainty is not a flaw in analysis. It is the nature of war.

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John Spencer is the Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute.

He is the coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare

Learn more at www.johnspenceronline.com

X: @SpencerGuard