Team Iran, perhaps fatally, miscalculated in Islamabad last weekend.
Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf believed he could play out the clock and give a battered Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps breathing room to regroup.
Ghalibaf naively bet that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz –– and the 25% of the global oil traffic that flows through it daily –– would afford the IRGC a badly needed reprieve.
But Vice President JD Vance quickly disabused the IRGC hardliners of that notion.
Team USA didn’t fly 7,500 miles to negotiate, but to demand the Islamic Republic’s unconditional surrender.
Iran refused.
Now President Donald Trump is going for the IRGC’s jugular.
On Saturday –– notably, as talks were ongoing –– Trump ordered two US Navy destroyers, the USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. and the USS Michael Murphy, to force their way through and transit the Strait of Hormuz while a hapless IRGC Navy stood down.
In doing so, the United States has made it clear that the vital waterway is now this war’s Ground Zero.
It is, as we’ve long assessed, the decisive terrain of the conflict.
Either Trump controls it, or he risks forever owning the greatest US geostrategic failure in the Middle East.
Spoiler alert: Trump is not going to fail.
Everything in US Central Command’s plan leading up to this point — including the president’s feints aimed at Kharg Island and threatening to destroy Iran’s bridges and energy infrastructure — is about ensuring the US controls the narrow, strategically vital sea passage.
Blockading it now is also about strategic messaging.
Trump is telling the IRGC that its days are numbered.
He’s also signaling China –– as he did in Venezuela and Nigeria –– that while Beijing militarily tightens its grip on Taiwan and the South China Sea, Trump is tightening his strategic grip on President Xi Jinping’s global oil supply.
Stopping or interdicting maritime shipping headed to or from Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf –– especially Kharg Island, which processes 90% of Iran’s oil exports –– is, relatively speaking, the easy part.
Controlling the Strait of Hormuz itself, and ensuring safe passage of allied shipping, is more challenging.
A naval blockade of this nature takes time to emplace and intensive manpower to enforce.
It also could bring new military risks, if China or Russia –– Tehran’s putative Axis of Evil allies –– decide to challenge it.
And if maintaining the blockade is the sole US focus, it will play into Iran’s hands.
Iran’s military is not trying to win this war, but to survive it.
A blockade-only approach risks giving Tehran additional time to reset and reorganize — and China is already delivering military supplies to Iran, despite Trump’s threats.
To sever the IRGC’s jugular, and bring about an end to the regime and to the war, the US must resume waging a multi-layered military campaign.
Forcefully returning to the Powell Doctrine –– which dictates applying relentless military pressure, with overwhelming force, through violence of action –– would dynamically enable the president to exert maximum pressure on the IRGC and the regime when they are militarily and economically at their weakest.
That means in addition to enforcing the blockade, the US must resume striking IRGC and Basij paramilitary targets.
They are the regime’s center of gravity.
Handcuff them with continuing strikes on their ballistic missiles, drones, launchers, speedboats, minelayers and more, and their ability to contest the Strait of Hormuz evaporates.
And as a final coup de grâce, Trump must fully secure the strait.
That will require strategically placed US boots on the ground in Iran — not as an invasion or an occupation, but as a covering force.
US Marines, Army Rangers and paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division –– supported by US Air Force A-10 Warthogs and Army AH-64 Apache helicopters in close air support mode –– must be used in raids and assaults to secure key terrain along the Iranian coastline.
Holding that terrain denies the IRGC the ability to target ships in the strait.
Finally, as an added pressure point on the regime, special forces teams operating deep inside the interior of Iran must seek out regular Iranian army forces willing to directly engage the IRGC and the Basij.
It worked in Afghanistan, and it can work in Iran.
As challenging as the assignment may be, controlling the Strait of Hormuz is mission critical for the United States, because it’s the key to ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The regime continues to stubbornly cling to its nuclear ambitions, and the strait is the only remaining strategic card it can use to protect that aspiration.
Seize and control the strait and –– whether Ghalibaf or the IRGC gets it or not –– it’s game over.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Retired Army Col. Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer. They are the cofounders of INTREP360 and write the INTREP360 Intelligence Report on Substack.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
