There is only a 34% chance of leadership change. Maybe only 20% of regime change. In the other 80% or so, forcibly opening the Strait seems rough. Experts are pessimistic about US easily taking Kharg Island, and even if the US controls both Kharg (Iran’s export base north of the strait) and other islands like Qeshm (the island in the strait with the largest Iranian military presence), it will probably suffer tens or hundreds of casualties while Iran can still threaten shipping with Shaheds, sea drones, speedboats, and mines. In the median case it seems like the Strait will open sometime between May and December but Iran will have some leverage, possibly extending the toll regime.
Iran losing their existing enriched uranium seems contingent on a deal, because the US plan to build a runway 300 miles inland, use cargo planes to land excavation equipment, invade Iranian bunkers over the course of a week, hope that the uranium is intact, easy to find, and not booby-trapped, distinguish it from decoys, put the uranium in storage casks, and fly it out would be difficult if this were 2003 Iraq when the US had air superiority supremacy. It is just not compatible with how warfare works in Iran in the drone era.
Claude thinks it’s only 20% to work, which seems optimistic
Getting there: Isfahan is more than 480 km (300 miles) inland, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest US naval assets. Al Jazeera The US has moved 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, Army Rangers, and Marine Expeditionary Units to the region. Forces would need to be inserted by air — there’s no overland route from a friendly staging area.
Securing the site: Recovering the uranium would require a significant number of ground troops beyond a small special operations footprint — dozens if not hundreds of additional troops to support the core team. They would need to secure the facilities under potential missile and drone fire and maintain a perimeter for the duration. CNN
The actual extraction: Airstrikes alone can’t penetrate the Isfahan tunnels because the facility doesn’t have ventilation shaft openings that serve as weak points at other nuclear sites. CNN This means physically entering and digging through rubble. A former special operator trained for such missions described it as “slow, meticulous and can be an extremely deadly process.” Another former defense official said it’s like “you’re not just buying a car on the lot, you’re buying the entire assembly line.” The Hill
Getting it out: The cylinders would need to be transferred into accident-rated transport casks by specially trained SOF personnel with nuclear materials handling experience. The cargo could fill several trucks, and a temporary airfield would likely need to be improvised. The full operation could run for a week. Israel Hayom
Force protection throughout: There would need to be constant close air support, satellite coverage, and every spectrum of warfare capability to keep Iranian forces away from the site while JSOC and other agencies methodically excavate and retrieve the material. The Hill
My probability estimate
I’d put the chances of a successful physical extraction of most of the enriched uranium at roughly 15-25%. Here’s my reasoning:
The operation is technically feasible — the US military can do extraordinary things — but the risk profile is extreme for what may be an unnecessary objective
Trump himself has wavered, on March 31 suggesting the uranium is “so deeply buried” and “pretty safe” — seeming to lower its priority Foreign Policy
Senior military planners are reportedly skeptical: “I don’t see any senior planning military officer pursuing this,” one former defense official said Al Jazeera
The political environment (Polymarket’s 77% for operations ending by June, plus low public appetite for ground troops) creates pressure to wrap up, not escalate
It looks like the US is at least succeeding at destroying the Iranian military, but it’s unclear what this buys them. Drones are really cheap, so Iran will probably always have those. Therefore I think regime change is necessary for the US to come out ahead.
As best I can tell, the conundrum is that Trump, the international economy, and American voters all want America to be out of the conflict soon, but Israel does not want this, and Israel has outsized influence in not just how American political incentives are determined, but in what information is presented to Trump and other key officials.
A lot of the claims I’ve seen Trump make about the war are clearly false, but not false in a way that he would benefit from lying deliberately. I realize a conspiracy to feed false information to the American executive to keep the war going sounds like a radical possibility,but there is precedent for it.
But the basic picture seems to be that their capacity to launch missiles has already fallen off dramatically. They’re still launching a lot of drones, which have a big cost asymmetry in how easy they are to launch vs. intercept, and they make any land or sea incursions extremely dicey. But they are limited in range and destructive capability against properly fortified targets.
I agree that things don’t look promising for a ground invasion or taking control of the strait. But I’m less sure how militarily sustainable a long stand-off is. The strait being closed is economically and politically painful (for everyone), but in the meantime it seems like the US and Israel can continue launching targeted air strikes and Iran can’t really strike back effectively.
Keep in mind that a lot of targets are not “properly fortified”, be that infrastructure or military facilities, and suicide drones are much harder to hunt down than ballistic missile TELs.
Modern ISR can perform well in a “Scud hunt” scenario, but “Shahed hunt” is a much worse match up.
Decoys would not be a problem for the US. A gamma-ray spectroscope weighs only a few ounces and costs only a few thousand dollars. It is almost certain that no one can produce a substance that looks like U-235 to a gamma-ray spectroscope that is cheaper to produce that highly-enriched uranium.
Seems excessive? A sizeable fraction of the entire Iraq campaign losses, for seizing a single island in an environment where US has sea control, air supremacy and an edge in ISR.
US may struggle to use the island, because of the hard-to-eliminate threat of long range strikes from Iran. But seizing it to deny it to the regime seems like a war goal that could be accomplished with a relatively minor effort.
Iraq was 32,000 wounded and 4,400 killed, and the US has already suffered hundreds of wounded and 13 deaths in the existing Iran campaign without any ground operations. I’m imagining 100 wounded and maybe another 20 KIA if the US holds Kharg for an extended period, not hundreds of KIA.
The issue is it’s not really true that the US has air supremacy. Kharg Island is within fiber FPV range of the mainland, and real-time ISR is not required for Iran to track static targets on the island. Plus Iran is still able to launch larger drones and the occasional missile. So holding Kharg really means denying drone launch points on a ~20 mile stretch of the coast, which for FPVs can just be two guys in a bunker.
The incentive for Iran is enormous given US’s low tolerance for casualties; it’s well worth it to launch 20 $1,500 drones to kill one American.
Apologies, I did misread your original causality claim.
FPVs are less “air force” and more “precision munitions”. You can think of them as of a new “crewed ATGM” variant, command guidance and all.
They work great for precision ground-to-ground strikes, but play little role in what is meant by “air supremacy”. They can’t pose a meaningful threat to most air platforms, and most air platforms can’t effectively hit them. They do nothing to deny US the ability to perform CAS or otherwise hit targets from air.
The main exception to that is helicopters, for the same reasons why ATGMs can pose a threat to helicopters in some circumstances. Specialized FPV interceptors, in hands of skilled operators, can also hit other drones, including heavier fixed wing drones like Shahed or even Reaper—allowing them to intrude on MANPADS territory. But the traditional “JDAM trucks” aren’t in the same bracket as FPV drones.
We also have very little information of FPV crew survivability in an environment when one of the parties has advanced ISR, ELINT included, fast kill loops, and enough air control to drop JDAMs freely. Every reason to expect more attrition on FPV crews, and skilled operators aren’t easy to replace—but quantitively, we don’t know by how much. Might be enough to make “deny the enemy most FPV ops within an area” a viable prospect, but you can’t count on it.
Yeah, I was being sloppy with air supremacy as ability to easily conduct air operations (which the US does 95% have) vs completely deny enemy air operations, which the US arguably can’t do given that Shaheds, reconnaissance drones, and one-way FPVs serve some of the purposes one would previously have needed air support for. I would argue that the increasing range of FPVs, now 40+ km in Ukraine, puts them well beyond what ATGMs are capable of.
There are a lot of variables involved given how fast tech is evolving. If Iran can reliably pilot drones from 500 km away, they wouldn’t be risking skilled operators. If US interceptors work as well as Ukraine’s, they could probably intercept >90% of Iranian FPVs and Shaheds. A lot might hinge on who gets to a milestone like this first.
The US seems to be in a rough spot. Polymarket thinks:
67% for US forces enter Iran by end of April
37% for Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by end of May
34% for Iran leadership change in 2026
29% for Iran to no longer control Kharg Island by end of June
40% for Trump to announce end of military operations by end of April, and 77% by end of June
Assuming no regime change, the US’s objectives are
opening the Strait of Hormuz
removing Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon
removing various other military capabilities of Iran and its proxies
There is only a 34% chance of leadership change. Maybe only 20% of regime change. In the other 80% or so, forcibly opening the Strait seems rough. Experts are pessimistic about US easily taking Kharg Island, and even if the US controls both Kharg (Iran’s export base north of the strait) and other islands like Qeshm (the island in the strait with the largest Iranian military presence), it will probably suffer tens or hundreds of casualties while Iran can still threaten shipping with Shaheds, sea drones, speedboats, and mines. In the median case it seems like the Strait will open sometime between May and December but Iran will have some leverage, possibly extending the toll regime.
Iran losing their existing enriched uranium seems contingent on a deal, because the US plan to build a runway 300 miles inland, use cargo planes to land excavation equipment, invade Iranian bunkers over the course of a week, hope that the uranium is intact, easy to find, and not booby-trapped, distinguish it from decoys, put the uranium in storage casks, and fly it out would be difficult if this were 2003 Iraq when the US had air
superioritysupremacy. It is just not compatible with how warfare works in Iran in the drone era.Claude thinks it’s only 20% to work, which seems optimistic
Getting there: Isfahan is more than 480 km (300 miles) inland, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest US naval assets. Al Jazeera The US has moved 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, Army Rangers, and Marine Expeditionary Units to the region. Forces would need to be inserted by air — there’s no overland route from a friendly staging area.
Securing the site: Recovering the uranium would require a significant number of ground troops beyond a small special operations footprint — dozens if not hundreds of additional troops to support the core team. They would need to secure the facilities under potential missile and drone fire and maintain a perimeter for the duration. CNN
The actual extraction: Airstrikes alone can’t penetrate the Isfahan tunnels because the facility doesn’t have ventilation shaft openings that serve as weak points at other nuclear sites. CNN This means physically entering and digging through rubble. A former special operator trained for such missions described it as “slow, meticulous and can be an extremely deadly process.” Another former defense official said it’s like “you’re not just buying a car on the lot, you’re buying the entire assembly line.” The Hill
Getting it out: The cylinders would need to be transferred into accident-rated transport casks by specially trained SOF personnel with nuclear materials handling experience. The cargo could fill several trucks, and a temporary airfield would likely need to be improvised. The full operation could run for a week. Israel Hayom
Force protection throughout: There would need to be constant close air support, satellite coverage, and every spectrum of warfare capability to keep Iranian forces away from the site while JSOC and other agencies methodically excavate and retrieve the material. The Hill
My probability estimate
I’d put the chances of a successful physical extraction of most of the enriched uranium at roughly 15-25%. Here’s my reasoning:
The operation is technically feasible — the US military can do extraordinary things — but the risk profile is extreme for what may be an unnecessary objective
Trump himself has wavered, on March 31 suggesting the uranium is “so deeply buried” and “pretty safe” — seeming to lower its priority Foreign Policy
Senior military planners are reportedly skeptical: “I don’t see any senior planning military officer pursuing this,” one former defense official said Al Jazeera
The political environment (Polymarket’s 77% for operations ending by June, plus low public appetite for ground troops) creates pressure to wrap up, not escalate
It looks like the US is at least succeeding at destroying the Iranian military, but it’s unclear what this buys them. Drones are really cheap, so Iran will probably always have those. Therefore I think regime change is necessary for the US to come out ahead.
As best I can tell, the conundrum is that Trump, the international economy, and American voters all want America to be out of the conflict soon, but Israel does not want this, and Israel has outsized influence in not just how American political incentives are determined, but in what information is presented to Trump and other key officials.
A lot of the claims I’ve seen Trump make about the war are clearly false, but not false in a way that he would benefit from lying deliberately. I realize a conspiracy to feed false information to the American executive to keep the war going sounds like a radical possibility, but there is precedent for it.
Right, but they can’t threaten land targets with missiles, apparently? IDK how reliable these sources are or how to interpret them in context:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/assessing-air-campaign-after-three-weeks-iran-war-numbers
https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-special-report-march-27-2026/
But the basic picture seems to be that their capacity to launch missiles has already fallen off dramatically. They’re still launching a lot of drones, which have a big cost asymmetry in how easy they are to launch vs. intercept, and they make any land or sea incursions extremely dicey. But they are limited in range and destructive capability against properly fortified targets.
I agree that things don’t look promising for a ground invasion or taking control of the strait. But I’m less sure how militarily sustainable a long stand-off is. The strait being closed is economically and politically painful (for everyone), but in the meantime it seems like the US and Israel can continue launching targeted air strikes and Iran can’t really strike back effectively.
Keep in mind that a lot of targets are not “properly fortified”, be that infrastructure or military facilities, and suicide drones are much harder to hunt down than ballistic missile TELs.
Modern ISR can perform well in a “Scud hunt” scenario, but “Shahed hunt” is a much worse match up.
Decoys would not be a problem for the US. A gamma-ray spectroscope weighs only a few ounces and costs only a few thousand dollars. It is almost certain that no one can produce a substance that looks like U-235 to a gamma-ray spectroscope that is cheaper to produce that highly-enriched uranium.
I don’t dispute your larger point.
Seems excessive? A sizeable fraction of the entire Iraq campaign losses, for seizing a single island in an environment where US has sea control, air supremacy and an edge in ISR.
US may struggle to use the island, because of the hard-to-eliminate threat of long range strikes from Iran. But seizing it to deny it to the regime seems like a war goal that could be accomplished with a relatively minor effort.
Iraq was 32,000 wounded and 4,400 killed, and the US has already suffered hundreds of wounded and 13 deaths in the existing Iran campaign without any ground operations. I’m imagining 100 wounded and maybe another 20 KIA if the US holds Kharg for an extended period, not hundreds of KIA.
The issue is it’s not really true that the US has air supremacy. Kharg Island is within fiber FPV range of the mainland, and real-time ISR is not required for Iran to track static targets on the island. Plus Iran is still able to launch larger drones and the occasional missile. So holding Kharg really means denying drone launch points on a ~20 mile stretch of the coast, which for FPVs can just be two guys in a bunker.
The incentive for Iran is enormous given US’s low tolerance for casualties; it’s well worth it to launch 20 $1,500 drones to kill one American.
Apologies, I did misread your original causality claim.
FPVs are less “air force” and more “precision munitions”. You can think of them as of a new “crewed ATGM” variant, command guidance and all.
They work great for precision ground-to-ground strikes, but play little role in what is meant by “air supremacy”. They can’t pose a meaningful threat to most air platforms, and most air platforms can’t effectively hit them. They do nothing to deny US the ability to perform CAS or otherwise hit targets from air.
The main exception to that is helicopters, for the same reasons why ATGMs can pose a threat to helicopters in some circumstances. Specialized FPV interceptors, in hands of skilled operators, can also hit other drones, including heavier fixed wing drones like Shahed or even Reaper—allowing them to intrude on MANPADS territory. But the traditional “JDAM trucks” aren’t in the same bracket as FPV drones.
We also have very little information of FPV crew survivability in an environment when one of the parties has advanced ISR, ELINT included, fast kill loops, and enough air control to drop JDAMs freely. Every reason to expect more attrition on FPV crews, and skilled operators aren’t easy to replace—but quantitively, we don’t know by how much. Might be enough to make “deny the enemy most FPV ops within an area” a viable prospect, but you can’t count on it.
Yeah, I was being sloppy with air supremacy as ability to easily conduct air operations (which the US does 95% have) vs completely deny enemy air operations, which the US arguably can’t do given that Shaheds, reconnaissance drones, and one-way FPVs serve some of the purposes one would previously have needed air support for. I would argue that the increasing range of FPVs, now 40+ km in Ukraine, puts them well beyond what ATGMs are capable of.
There are a lot of variables involved given how fast tech is evolving. If Iran can reliably pilot drones from 500 km away, they wouldn’t be risking skilled operators. If US interceptors work as well as Ukraine’s, they could probably intercept >90% of Iranian FPVs and Shaheds. A lot might hinge on who gets to a milestone like this first.