How the US Would Invade Iran in 2026

“Time to go rally the troops. We cross the line of departure in four hours.”

byPhil WalterDiane MayeNathan Finney

As I walk through my company’s assembly area, I face the insomnia and nervousness that millions of people have faced throughout history. I wonder if I have done enough to prepare my soldiers. I wonder how my father and my grandfather felt when they stood on this ground decades ago. I worry that I won’t bring credit upon the U.S. Army, my family, my fellow female commanders, and myself. No matter what the party line is, I know the actions taken by women in Operation Iranian Freedom will receive a high level of scrutiny. While I worry about the second and third order effects in this operation, especially the interactions between Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and the Iranian Shi’ia, I know I can only focus on what I can positively control. I can control my actions, I can influence those around me, and I can set a positive example for my soldiers.

My father told me this would happen — he said the conflicts in this area of the world would never end. He served in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom; I was only five years old when he went on his first deployment. I’ve been told that it was the worst time to be in Iraq. It was 2006 and the violence was at an all time high. He went back two more times, in 2009 when I was just eight, and again in 2018 when I was a senior in high school. Each time he went he stayed for a year or more. The justification for the invasion of Iraq during my father’s time was that Saddam Hussein, the ruler of Iraq, had violated United Nations (UN) resolutions as part of his weapons of mass destruction program. The invasion of Iraq led to many years of conflict in that country, and the broader region, before the UN-backed partitioning in 2020.

This piece first appeared in the Strategy Bridgeherein 2016.

My father told me that when the Ba’ath party fell following our invasion of Iraq in 2003 there was an intense power vacuum. Saddam Hussein may have been an evil tyrant, but he was able to keep the state of Iraq stable, forcing the disparate Sunni, Shi’ia, and Kurdish factions to live together under a single government. After the removal of Saddam Hussein, various groups vied for power over the years, each backed by various external actors — Iran being the most tangible and concerning, given their role in killing Americans in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and the later Operation Just Recovery.

It was only after the second Sunni Awakening in 2017, a response to the tyrannical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), that Iraq began to stabilize. After the U.S. government decided to arm the Sunnis independently and recognize their right to self-governance, the tribes and moderate elements of the former Ba’athist regime rose up and defeated the “Islamic State” in western Iraq one village at a time. Once they resumed control over Anbar, Salah al Din, Ninewa, Diyala and the Western half of Baghdad, Iraq’s Sunni Arab leaders declared their independence from the central Iraqi government. They vowed to never again let themselves be persecuted by a ruling Shi’ia body. Shortly thereafter, the Kurds followed suit into the partitioned Iraq that we have today.

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