Negotiations between the United States and Iran have effectively entered a state of paralysis, with the collapse of the preliminary June Memorandum of Understanding leaving the two sides divided over sanctions, compensation, military pressure, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
The diplomatic deadlock has been accompanied by a dramatic deterioration in maritime traffic. On 11 August, only six vessels passed through Hormuz, compared with a pre-war norm of approximately 130 to 140 vessels. By 14 August, Reuters was reporting that traffic had moved close to a standstill after further attacks on commercial shipping, while Washington indicated that its naval blockade could be maintained indefinitely.
The result is a dangerous strategic vacuum in which neither side appears ready to compromise, yet neither has an obvious path towards decisive victory.
If the negotiations remain frozen, what comes next? Will Washington intensify military pressure without crossing into a ground war? Can Iran continue using Hormuz as leverage without provoking a harsher blockade? And could the failure of economic and military pressure eventually make limited US ground operations more likely?
These questions matter more than whether Washington technically possesses the military capability to invade Iran. The central issue is whether military occupation could achieve a political outcome that cannot be achieved more cheaply through airpower, naval pressure, economic isolation, and diplomacy.
From Washington’s perspective, the current strategy appears designed to maximise the pressure while keeping the threshold for a full-scale ground invasion extremely high. The United States possesses overwhelming advantages in airpower, intelligence, satellite surveillance, precision weapons, naval capabilities, strategic bombers, and global logistics. These capabilities allow Washington to attack Iranian military infrastructure without immediately assuming the enormous costs of occupying Iranian territory.
This distinction is critical. Limited ground deployments, special operations, raids, or temporary seizures of strategically important positions would be fundamentally different from an invasion intended to overthrow the Iranian government and occupy the country. The former could be used to increase negotiating leverage; the latter would create an entirely different war.
Washington’s growing reliance on economic pressure reflects this preference. US officials have indicated that the naval blockade could continue “indefinitely”, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signalled additional economic measures.
The emerging strategy therefore combines military pressure with economic strangulation. The objective is not necessarily to destroy Iran completely, but to reduce its ability to finance the war, sustain missile and drone production, maintain imports and oil revenues, and resist pressure long enough to make negotiations more attractive.
Iran’s economic situation makes this strategy potentially powerful. The World Bank estimates that Iranian GDP contracted by approximately 2.7 per cent in the Iranian year ending in March 2026 as sanctions, trade disruption, and intensified hostilities weighed on the economy. A prolonged blockade could further restrict oil exports, foreign-exchange revenues, imports, and government spending.
Yet Washington faces an important limitation of its own: economic pressure works gradually, while military consumption is immediate. Modern warfare requires continuous supplies of precision weapons and missile interceptors.
Lockheed Martin delivered approximately 620 PAC-3 MSE interceptors in 2025, around 20 per cent more than the previous year. Under the new production framework, annual capacity is expected to increase from roughly 600 to 2,000 missiles, more than a threefold increase. In April, the US government awarded Lockheed Martin a $4.7 billion contract related to accelerated production, while a later multiyear agreement announced in July reached $58.62 billion.
These figures do not mean that the United States is running out of weapons. They demonstrate instead the industrial cost of sustaining a high-intensity conflict. Washington can spend substantially more than Tehran, but it must simultaneously replenish stocks, protect US bases and forces, defend allies, support other theatres such as Ukraine, and preserve strategic reserves.
A ground invasion would dramatically increase those requirements by adding thousands of troops, extensive logistics, continuous air support, medical infrastructure, force protection, and potentially an occupation force.
IRANIAN STRATEGY: Iran’s strategy is fundamentally different. Tehran knows it cannot compete with the United States symmetrically in airpower, naval power, intelligence, or defence spending.
Instead, it relies on geography, asymmetric warfare, endurance, missiles, drones, and the ability to impose costs beyond the immediate battlefield.
Iran covers approximately 1.65 million square km, more than four times the size of Iraq. Its geography includes the Zagros and Alborz mountain ranges, extensive deserts, difficult coastal areas, and large urban centres. These conditions would make a conventional ground campaign extremely difficult. Iran also has a population of more than 90 million, creating a vast environment in which resistance could continue even if major conventional military formations were defeated.
Its military structure is equally important. Iran combines regular armed forces with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij militia, missile and drone units, underground facilities, and irregular networks. Consequently, defeating Iran’s conventional forces would not necessarily end the conflict. An invasion could instead evolve into a prolonged insurgency and counterinsurgency campaign, repeating some of the strategic problems encountered by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Strait of Hormuz remains the central pressure point. Before the war, approximately 130 to 140 ships could pass through the waterway during a comparable period, but only six passed on 11 August. By contrast, traffic through Bab Al-Mandeb has remained relatively stable, with around 25 vessels passing compared with a 10-day average of 24. This indicates that the disruption is not simply a general collapse in regional shipping; Hormuz itself has become a strategic pressure point.
For Iran, maintaining uncertainty around Hormuz raises insurance, shipping, and energy costs while preserving a powerful bargaining instrument. For Washington, restoring freedom of navigation is therefore both an economic objective and a test of American credibility. However, the United States faces a paradox: the more aggressively it attempts to reopen the strait, the greater the risk that Iran responds with additional attacks on shipping, missiles, drones, or regional targets.
Iran therefore does not need to defeat the United States conventionally. Its more realistic objective is to prevent Washington from converting military superiority into decisive political victory. This explains the importance of Tehran’s reported willingness to prolong the conflict. Iranian officials have suggested that extending the war could strengthen deterrence and demonstrate to future US administrations that attacking Iran carries long-term costs.
This strategy resembles an economic and military “survival economy”. Resources are prioritised for maintaining state institutions, security structures, military capabilities, and essential economic functions rather than restoring normal economic growth.
But this strategy also has limits. The 2.7 per cent GDP contraction already demonstrates the cost of endurance. If sanctions and the blockade continue to restrict oil revenues and trade, Tehran will increasingly face a choice between financing the war and stabilising the domestic economy.
The question of a US ground invasion therefore depends heavily on what “ground invasion” means. A conventional invasion involving hundreds of thousands of troops and an attempt to occupy Iran remains highly unlikely because of the enormous military, economic, and political costs.
Limited ground operations are more conceivable, including special operations, raids against specific military targets, or temporary operations designed to secure strategically important maritime positions. However, even these actions would carry significant escalation risks. Any American ground presence could allow Tehran to portray the conflict as a national struggle against foreign occupation and expose US forces to missiles, drones, mines, and asymmetric attacks.
US CONSTRAINTS: The American political calendar adds another constraint.
Reuters reported on 14 August that US petrol prices were approximately 29 per cent higher year-on-year, while Trump urged Americans to accept higher prices as part of the campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. A prolonged conflict that further increases energy prices, defence spending, and the risk of American casualties could become politically difficult to sustain as the November midterm elections approach.
This creates a race between two forms of endurance. Washington believes economic pressure and the blockade can weaken Iran faster than Tehran can impose costs on the United States. Iran, meanwhile, believes that time can increase the political and economic cost of continued American escalation.
The most likely trajectory is therefore escalation without occupation. The United States is likely to continue combining air and naval pressure, sanctions, and maritime enforcement while keeping limited special operations as an escalation option. Iran is likely to continue relying on Hormuz, missiles, drones, asymmetric pressure, and diplomatic ambiguity to increase the cost of Washington’s demands.
The central danger is that the current stalemate could become self-perpetuating: negotiations remain frozen, Hormuz remains severely disrupted, economic pressure intensifies, and both sides continue testing the other’s capacity to endure. A full US invasion would remain a last resort because it could transform a conflict over nuclear capabilities, sanctions, and maritime security into a war over the survival of the Iranian state.
Ultimately, the decisive factor may not be military strength but political endurance. The United States is trying to convert its overwhelming military superiority into political leverage without becoming trapped in another occupation war. Iran is trying to transform its ability to survive into bargaining power without allowing economic survival to become economic collapse.
The side that breaks first may therefore not be the side with fewer weapons, but the side that concludes that the political cost of continuing the war has become greater than the cost of compromise.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 August, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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