Beyond the Strikes: What Comes Next for Iran?
This analysis is based on publicly available information, reports, and assessments. The scenarios outlined below therefore do not necessarily reflect classified operational decisions or plans by the United States or Israel and should be understood as analytical assessments rather than definitive predictions.
Based on reporting and the trajectory of U.S. and Israeli military operations in recent months, if negotiations fail to produce a political understanding, one plausible short-term scenario could involve continued air and missile strikes, accompanied by highly limited and short-duration ground operations by special forces. If such operations were to occur, they could involve intense engagements and extensive air, intelligence, and logistical support, without necessarily signaling the beginning of a full-scale ground war or an attempt to occupy Iran.
As noted in previous analyses, U.S. strikes against southern areas of Iran could, among other objectives, be intended to reduce Iran’s ability to threaten maritime traffic and exert pressure on shipping in the region, including around the Strait of Hormuz. However, attributing such an objective to a confirmed operational decision, without access to direct military intelligence, remains an analytical assessment rather than an established fact.
In the short term, one strategic target that could potentially feature in the military calculations of the United States and Israel is the underground Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La (Pickaxe Mountain) complex near Natanz. Because of its location deep within a mountain and its hardened underground structure, the facility is among the types of targets whose complete destruction through conventional airstrikes presents significant challenges. Recent satellite-imagery-based assessments have also indicated increased construction activity and reinforcement of entrances and surrounding infrastructure at the site during 2026.
At the same time, publicly available information cannot establish with certainty what activities are currently taking place inside the underground sections of the complex. Claims concerning the presence of enrichment facilities, the transfer of centrifuges, or other nuclear-related activities within the site should therefore be treated cautiously. Available satellite evidence alone is also insufficient to fully confirm or rule out some of these claims.
If a decision were made to conduct a ground operation against such a target, the use of special forces could be considered one hypothetical option. Given the depth of the facility, its underground structure, surrounding fortifications, and the difficulty of gaining access, such an operation, if undertaken, would be highly complex and risky and would likely require a high degree of precise intelligence, operational coordination, air support, and logistical assistance.
From this perspective, if a ground operation against a specific target were placed on the agenda, it could be expected to remain limited in terms of duration, scope, and troop numbers, while not necessarily being limited in terms of the intensity of combat or the scale of air and intelligence support. There is therefore an important distinction between a limited, targeted ground operation and a large-scale ground invasion. The occurrence of the former would not necessarily imply a move toward the latter.
In recent months, public statements have also raised the possibility of targeting Pickaxe Mountain. However, such statements do not establish that a ground operation against the complex is currently being planned or prepared. Reaching such a conclusion would go beyond the publicly available evidence. The possibility of using special forces should therefore be regarded solely as one hypothetical scenario.
Over the medium and long term, if the political deadlock continues, another possible course of action would be sustained economic pressure, sanctions, and efforts to constrain the Islamic Republic’s military and regional capabilities. Such an approach could complement limited military measures as part of a broader pressure strategy aimed at compelling Tehran to accept an agreement or alter its strategic behavior.
This approach could also be compared, as a historical and analytical analogy, with aspects of the United States’ decades-long policy toward Cuba, particularly the use of prolonged economic pressure and political isolation. However, such a comparison should not be interpreted as a prediction of Washington’s future strategy, since Iran’s geopolitical, military, and economic circumstances differ fundamentally from those of Cuba during the Cold War.
Overall, the publicly available evidence is consistent with a multi-layered scenario involving air and missile strikes, economic and political pressure, efforts to constrain military capabilities, and, if deemed necessary, limited and targeted operations against selected strategic objectives. By contrast, the scenario of occupying Iran or entering into a large-scale, prolonged ground war would require a substantially different set of decisions and circumstances from the operational pattern observed so far.
This does not mean that such a scenario can be ruled out. Rather, based on the publicly available evidence, it is important not to equate the capability to conduct a limited ground operation with a decision to launch a large-scale ground invasion.
Ultimately, regardless of which of these scenarios materializes, continued military and economic confrontation would carry significant human and economic costs. In any escalation of the crisis, the people of Iran would be among those bearing a substantial share of its humanitarian, economic, and social consequences.
From this perspective, however, the central issue is not simply how to manage or contain the current crisis, but how to end the political conditions that have produced it. After decades of political repression, economic deterioration, institutional dysfunction, and regional confrontation, Iran has, in this assessment, passed critical thresholds beyond which sustainable development, prosperity, security, and social stability are unlikely to be achieved under the existing political order.
A genuinely consequential political transition would therefore mean the end of the Islamic Republic as the governing system of Iran and the transfer of political power to the Iranian people. This should not be understood merely as replacing one group of officials with another, but as a fundamental change in the source of political authority: from an unelected ideological system to institutions whose authority derives from the people.
Such a transition would require the establishment of representative transitional institutions with a clearly defined and limited mandate, followed by the restoration of fundamental political and civil rights, the creation of independent mechanisms for administering elections, and a process through which Iranians themselves determine the constitutional and institutional framework of the country. Ultimately, legitimate political authority would have to be established through free and credible elections and the peaceful transfer of power.
The distinction is important. The objective would not simply be the removal of individual leaders or the replacement of one ruling faction by another. It would be the dismantling of the existing system of political rule and the establishment of a state in which sovereignty rests with the Iranian people.
In this sense, the decisive question is not merely whether external military or economic pressure can force the Islamic Republic to change its behavior. It is whether the present political order can continue to exist at all while Iran seeks a path toward development, prosperity, security, and lasting stability.
If the current confrontation ultimately creates the conditions for such a transformation, the most consequential outcome would therefore not be a military victory over Iran, but the emergence of an Iran in which political power is returned to its people and the country’s future is determined by Iranians themselves.
The central question, therefore, is not only how the confrontation between Iran and its adversaries will evolve, but whether the Iranian people will ultimately be able to determine what comes after it.