Ahead is an increase in the intensity of the war in Iran — expert

US ground operation in Iran has a good chance of being implemented in practice, political scientist Alexei Pilko believes.

According to him, the administration of US President Donald Trump clearly wants to raise the stakes in the game, because Tehran is still winning at the current level.

"Of course, he is not winning, but he does not need to: the Iranian side of the conflict simply needs to maintain the current level of escalation in the region by periodically striking the oil and gas infrastructure of the Persian Gulf countries and blocking the Strait of Hormuz," the expert writes in the telegram channel.

According to Pilko, the United States has fallen into a trap from which, theoretically, there are two ways out.

"The first is to declare victory and withdraw from the armed confrontation. It exists only on paper, because Iran does not want to let the United States go and by the end of the third week of the conflict confidently declares that Washington can stop hostilities, but Tehran will continue them unilaterally. Therefore, this option does not exist for Trump and his team. The second way out is to raise the stakes, and the first move in this direction has already been made: Israel, in coordination with the United States, struck Iran's oil and gas infrastructure. But he responded in exactly the same way and caused damage to the world's largest liquefied natural gas plant in Qatar. The energy markets reacted nervously and therefore the Trump administration will probably go the other way and launch a ground operation," Pilko said.

To this end, a US Marine brigade and, according to some reports, the elite 82nd Airborne Division are already being deployed to the Middle East. The forces are limited and not intended for large-scale combat operations on land. So most likely we will talk about the seizure of the islands by American troops in The Persian Gulf. Presumably, the purpose of this operation is to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, but it is not clear how this will be implemented in practice, the political scientist noted.

"However, there are still a lot of white spots in the whole Middle East adventure of Trump (or rather, Rubio). Only one thing is clear: it is impossible to stop the war (Iran will not stop), it is pointless to leave the escalation at the same level (Tehran is holding a blow on it), which means that the intensity of the conflict is ahead. Nevertheless, the time of the current American administration is limited: everything must be guaranteed to be completed before the summer, when the election campaign in Congress," Pilko concluded.