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Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Volume II: Trends in Force Projection Against Potential Adversaries
The RAND Corporation published Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Volume II: Trends in Force Projection Against Potential Adversaries on February 8, 2017. Duncan Long, Terrence K. Kelly, and David C. Gompert edited it. Scott Boston, Michael S. Chase, and Jeffrey Engstrom are listed as contributors. An American family should care because one Iran story in the study moves a large American ground force to Oman, the country across the water from Iran, and says the force is there so leaders could seize a foothold or start a full-scale invasion. These are scenarios written in 2017, nine years before the Pentagon planned island seizures near the same strait.
Evidence rating: MODERATE. The rating covers a RAND study sponsored by the US Army and published on 8 February 2017, which writes into its 2025 Iran scenario a ground force staged in Oman "to seize a lodgment around the strait" and to give leaders "the option to undertake a full-scale invasion." RAND notes that its reports do not necessarily reflect the sponsor's views.
What the article says
The volume builds nine war scenarios about China, Russia, or Iran. The authors say the point is to test whether it was getting harder for the United States to project force, meaning to get combat power to a far place and use it there. Anti-access means trying to stop those forces from arriving. Area denial means trying to stop them from operating once they are close. Some stories are set in 2015. Some are set in 2025. The report says the 2025 Iran story assumes the 2015 Iran story never happened. The authors built these scenarios. They are not a history of a war that was fought.
The ground passage that matters most is in a 2025 branch where Iran has a small number of nuclear weapons that missiles can carry. The authors call that branch overwhelming force. In it, they write that the United States would like to avoid an invasion and a later occupation of Iran. They write that the United States would let the regime survive if the regime were, in their words, thoroughly neutered, and if it did not actually use nuclear weapons.
The same branch still moves ground forces forward, as an option held in reserve. The story says that, over about a month, the United States gathers air and naval forces in Gulf states that will host them. It also says Israel would have to be talked out of a nuclear strike launched first. That line is inside the authors' scenario. It is not a finding that Israel had decided to strike.
The ground move is specific. The story brings III Corps headquarters, three division headquarters, four brigade combat teams, and a Marine expeditionary force to Oman. III Corps is an Army headquarters able to command several divisions. A brigade combat team, which the report abbreviates BCT, is one of the Army's standard ground packages. A Marine expeditionary force is a large Marine force that can come from the sea. Two more division headquarters and six more brigade combat teams are on the way. More units are being readied in the continental United States, which the report calls CONUS. In this story the troops are staged in Oman.
these forces are intended to give the option to seize a lodgment around the strait and to give leadership the option to undertake a full-scale invasion.
RAND Corporation, Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Volume II, in the nuclear-armed Iran scenario set in 2025. Published February 8, 2017.
A lodgment is a foothold, a piece of shore seized so more troops and supplies can land. The strait is the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between Iran and Oman that ships use to leave the Persian Gulf. The sentence gives leaders an option. The next events in that branch are bomb and missile strikes. The report's summary says this unconstrained path leads to a nuclear exchange. In the pages read here, on the fourth day of the air strikes, the story has Iran use a nuclear weapon against the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. That is the scenario's plot. It is not a record of an event.
A separate 2025 story in the same volume, one in which Iran has no nuclear weapon, speaks more bluntly about occupation. There the authors say regime change is not an American objective, because it would take a long commitment of land forces and some hope of building another Iranian state. They write that US ground forces are not sized for a conflict followed by an extended occupation. Later in that story, one escalation option is to send ground forces in to secure footholds and hunt missiles. The authors write that an invasion could be fatal for the Iranian regime. They also write that it could leave the United States in a long, exhausting occupation if the United States stayed and tried to rebuild Iran. They add that staying to rebuild is not certain, given the earlier US experience in Iraq. In that story, Iran gives up when it sees invasion preparations. That ending is inside the scenario. It is not a report that a real government surrendered.
What other reporting and posts add
The 2026 options looked like RAND's lodgment. In March 2026, Axios reported four options for a "massive final blow," as The Independent retold them: "invade or blockade Kharg Island; invade the island of Larak, which helps Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz; seize the island of Abu Musa and two Iranian-controlled smaller islands which are also located near the strait; or block and seize ships exporting Iranian oil." The Independent, 26 March 2026. (capture: twitter/t56__v668.md) In June, independent reporter Ken Klippenstein reported a leaked Army order sending a company of the 82nd Airborne to Israel, tied in an X summary of his report to "joint contingency planning" "for seizing Iranian-controlled Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf and carving out coastal territory inside Iran." His article was not opened. X news summary, 8 June 2026. (capture: twitter/t07__v083.md)
How much of that force had arrived by 2026. RAND's scenario stages a corps headquarters, multiple divisions, and a Marine expeditionary force. In 2026 the reported ground additions were about 5,000 Marines and a brigade of the 82nd Airborne, with "up to 10,000 additional ground troops" under consideration, per the Wall Street Journal as relayed by Sputnik. @SputnikInt, 27 March 2026. (capture: twitter/t48__v565.md) A Senate resolution's findings put the total US deployment to the region at "more than 50,000" by early March. S.J.Res. 211. (capture: twitter/t52__v622.md)
What it shows
Nine years before the war, the Army paid RAND to game a 2025 war with Iran, and the study staged a corps headquarters, several divisions, and a Marine expeditionary force in Oman to seize "a lodgment around the strait," with a full invasion kept as an option. In March 2026, Axios reported the Pentagon's "final blow" options: invade or blockade Kharg Island, invade Larak, and seize Abu Musa and two smaller islands near the strait. In June, a leaked Army order tied an 82nd Airborne company in Israel to planning for "carving out coastal territory inside Iran."
The foothold on the strait was planned on paper first and then in the war itself. See Force-Planning Documents and Pentagon Ground Plans 2026.
Check it yourself
Read the report: Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Volume II (PDF). The February 8, 2017 date, the Army sponsor, and RAND's note on sponsors are on the catalog page opened while writing this: Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Volume II. That page says the research was sponsored by the US Army Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office, and conducted in the RAND Arroyo Center. It also says RAND publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of research clients and sponsors.
Why a 2017 study is on this shelf: the RAND Corporation is a research organization in Santa Monica, California, largely funded by the US government to do studies for the Army, Air Force, and Pentagon. This volume was paid for by the Army. It was written nine years before the United States and Israel began bombing Iran on 28 February 2026, and one of its imagined wars is set in 2025. The ground step it sketches, seizing "a lodgment around the strait," is close to what reporters said the Pentagon was weighing in 2026. That is why it helps a reader see that these options were thought through long before this war.
Research captures: twitter/t56__v668.md, twitter/t07__v083.md, twitter/t48__v565.md, twitter/t52__v622.md
Last Updated: 2026-09-26