Iran War and U.S. Military Planning

The Trump administration has ordered an additional roughly 2,500 Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and three amphibious assault ships (including USS Boxer), effectively doubling deployments to the Middle East to about 5,000 Marines and multiple warships after a similar dispatch from Japan and California. At the same time, Pentagon officials have drawn up detailed contingency plans — including potential deployment of elements of the 82nd Airborne and the Global Response Force, detainee-processing arrangements, and missions such as reopening the Strait of Hormuz, seizing Kharg Island or securing enriched uranium — even as the White House says it is “not planning to send ground troops” and defends the planning as providing maximum optionality.