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What war with Iran could look like

Defense News published What war with Iran could look like on June 4, 2019. The page names Howard Altman and David B. Larter. The byline also shows blank slots before those names, so other contributors may be missing from the page as it loaded. This is a scenario, written when tensions were high and before the later wars. It imagines a fight and asks what American ground forces inside Iran would look like. An American family should care because, in 2019, it already pictured American special forces inside Iran, and it reported leaked plans for as many as 120,000 US troops to the region. Seven years later, Americans did go onto Iranian ground.

Evidence rating: MODERATE. The rating covers Defense News's June 2019 scenario, built from interviews with more than a dozen military experts, and the real 2019 news it reports: leaked war plans for as many as 120,000 US troops to the region.

What the article says

The article says nobody was advocating a large-scale occupation like the one after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It says many experts cautioned against assuming an invasion would make Iran an American ally. It says Military Times interviewed more than a dozen military experts, including current and former U.S. officials, about how a conflict might begin and how it could play out. Then it writes the imagined war in the present tense.

In that scene, the only American and allied boots inside Iran belong to clandestine special operations forces and other government agencies. Their job, in the story, is to find and destroy key targets or to get key insiders out.

"The few U.S. and allied boots on the ground inside of Iran belong to clandestine special operations forces and other government agencies who surreptitiously locate and destroy key targets or shuttle key insiders out of the war-torn country of Iran."

Defense News, June 4, 2019. This sentence is the article's scenario, not a quoted order and not a named official's statement.

Later, under a heading about ground forces, the article drops the story voice. It says the Army would have a vital role, but with no plans yet to invade Iran. It says that role would not look like Iraq, with tanks and trucks rolling across the desert. It says soldiers would instead run logistics, move missile batteries and helicopters, and defend U.S. and allied bases from Iranian missiles and from proxy groups in places such as Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

Around that scenario, the article reports real 2019 news. It says leaked reports described war plans that could include as many as 120,000 U.S. troops headed to the region, a number it compares to the 2003 Iraq invasion. It says Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan then said about 900 additional troops were headed to the region, on top of crews for Patriot missile batteries already sent. It says the United States sent a carrier group and long-range bombers. The article says leaders on both sides claimed they did not want war.

What other reporting and posts add

Where the 120,000 figure came from. The New York Times reported on 13 May 2019 that, at the request of national security adviser John Bolton, "Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons." That sentence was quoted by journalist Borzou Daragahi the next day. @borzou, 14 May 2019; The New York Times, 13 May 2019 (not opened for this page). (capture: twitter/t48__v573.md)

Where bigger numbers came from. The same week, former Navy intelligence officer Malcolm Nance posted: "Any war with Iran would require 500,000 troops and the return to the draft." That is his estimate, not a figure in the Times plan. @MalcolmNance, 14 May 2019. (capture: twitter/t48__v565.md) Much later, in 2026, retired Gen. Philip Breedlove was reported as noting that the 2003 Iraq invasion "required more than 300,000 US troops," against about 50,000 US troops then in the region, "but few are ground troops," as the World Socialist Web Site summarized his Fox interview. WSWS, 16 July 2026. (capture: twitter/t56__v668.md) Numbers of that size are why "half a million" or a draft shows up in the debate at all; see the Force-Planning Documents page, part of the American Soldiers — Articles overview.

What it shows

In 2019, the first Trump administration's own updated plan envisioned "sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East" against Iran, prepared at the request of national security adviser John Bolton, and a defense trade paper imagined clandestine American special forces already working "inside of Iran." Seven years later, the pieces of that picture were real: more than 50,000 troops in the region, and more than 90 US service members on Iranian soil for the April 2026 F-15E rescue.

The ground war was planned on paper long before it was denied in public. See Force-Planning Documents and Americans on Iranian Soil.

Check it yourself

• What war with Iran could look like, Howard Altman and David B. Larter, Defense News, June 4, 2019.

Status: Patrick Shanahan is alive.

Why read a 2019 article in 2026? Because it is a snapshot of what military experts expected an American war with Iran to look like seven years before one started. In 2019 the United States and Iran came close to open conflict after the US left the 2015 nuclear deal and Iran was accused of attacking tankers in the Gulf. When the actual US-Israeli air war began on 28 February 2026, many of the patterns sketched here (air and sea power first, special forces quietly inside, soldiers defending bases from missiles) were the ones people argued about. Defense News and Military Times are sister publications that cover the US armed forces.

Research captures: twitter/t48__v573.md, twitter/t48__v565.md, twitter/t56__v668.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26