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The US has a bunch of different options in Iran, but none of them are particularly good. Ordered from least aggressive to most aggressive:
The US washes its hands of the conflict, and withdraws from the Middle East entirely, including its bases in the region. Arguably this is the best long-term solution since the US presence is nowhere near commensurate with its strategic interests in the area, but doing this now looks like Iran would be singlehandedly running the US out of town, handing it a massive propaganda win and the US a massive propaganda loss. This is not seriously being considered.
The US washes its hands of the conflict, but remains in the region hoping for a status quo ante bellum but prepared to accept some sort of Iranian victory in terms of tolling the straits, regional proxies, etc. In the meantime, US bases in the region are still targets although the US can evacuate soldiers temporarily. Still a major prestige hit for the US and a big propaganda win for Iran, and eventually the US would have to deal with an emboldened + strengthened Iran, so it's just can-kicking while the problem festers.
The current operation: The US continues its high-intensity but noncommital air attacks hoping Iran blinks. If it doesn't, the US tries to wedge open the strait regardless. The best insight into how this would go is this video by Perun (who is easily one of the best defense analysts publicly posting). To summarize, the US has done an excellent job at pulverizing Iran's conventional forces like its frigates, submarines, and airframes, but it can only do an OK job at suppressing asymmetric tools like the "mosquito fleet" that could dump a few mines into the water, its shoot-and-scoot anti-ship missile launchers, and drones. The US could reduce the rate of these quite a bit, but getting them down to zero is implausible. To reopen the strait then, the US would have to heavily subsidize ship insurance, but this alone would be insufficient -- you'd likely see a few brave captains willing to YOLO it but most shipping companies probably wouldn't be willing to go full Lord Farquaad with their crew. Naval escorts would be required. The problem is that the US just doesn't have enough hulls in the region to do the dual mission. If it pulls ships away from the suppression campaign to put them on escort duty, then the rate of Iranian asymmetric fire would likely increase again. European and Asian allies would actually come in clutch here since they don't have a lot of ships with the magazine depth of an Arleigh Burke nor the power projection of a supercarrier, but they do have a lot of frigates that would be great at escort duty. The problem is that allies have been noncommital so far, and, uh, Trump isn't exactly the best diplomat. Maybe he'll be able to blackmail them into some sort of arrangement, but he'll have a steep hill to climb. There's not exactly a lot of goodwill from other democracies to come pull America's chestnuts out of the fire.
Economic warfare: The US tries to strangle Iran's economy by shutting down oil exports. The US has naval supremacy, so doing this to its maritime exports would not be hard. Iran wasn't exactly in a great economic position before the conflict, and shutting down a major chunk of its oil exports would be another severe blow. The best-case scenario is this being the straw that breaks the camel's back and triggers a general uprising that overthrows the regime. But the Iranian state is very adept at suppressing dissent, and there was already a major crackdown before the war started. If there's not a general uprising, then there might be some slim hope for this to make the regime buckle in some other way -- maybe some senior leaders rely on oil exports for their corrupt slush fund, and if this gets taken out then perhaps they try to seize control of the state and negotiate an end. But at this point we're mostly wishcasting. Also, shutting down Iran's oil exports would worsen the global supply situation which would boomerang on the US, and it would probably take more than a few weeks before the effects really started biting Iran.
The US invades Kharg island by air or by sea. The US could almost certainly take the island relatively easily, but stationing marines there for an extended period would expose them to strikes from the Iranian coast. It's a decent ways from the mainland, but not far enough that it would be considered "safe" by any means. People have speculated that this would be used to shut down Iranian seabound oil exports, but that's already very doable with the US navy in the region, so the main point of this would be to use it as a bargaining chip of some sort. "See how serious we are, we're willing to invade sovereign Iranian territory!" That sort of thing.
The US invades Qeshm island, which is situated in the narrowest part of the strait. This removes one of the easiest launch points and lets the US set up a defensive perimeter as well as being another bargaining chip to hand back to Iran to get them to make peace. But it alone doesn't remove Iran's ability to target ships, it just removes one avenue. It's also fairly large, well-populated, and situated closer to the Iranian mainland than Kharg with Bandar Abbas right there. All this puts US troops at much greater risk while still not forcing a decisive outcome.
The US invades a bunch of Iranian islands like Kharg, Qeshm, Kish, Lavan, Siri, Abumusa, etc. This gives more bargaining chips I guess, but I don't know what the other islands would give beyond that. I've heard some people float the idea of giving Musa and Tunbs back to the UAE after Iran seized it from them a few decades ago, but otherwise Iran still has the mainland and can still credibly threaten ships.
The US invades the Iranian mainland to establish a buffer zone between the regime and the Gulf. The larger it is the more effective it would be at stopping shorter range missiles and patrolling for random fishing boats with mines, but this is a massive escalation and would take many tens of thousands of troops at the minimum to be effective, and at this point Iran could switch from targeting ships to targeting US soldiers until it hopes the US loses political will.
The US invades, and seeks to balkanize the country through its various ethnic minorities to render it impotent. This would reduce US exposure over the longer term, but it's unlikely to get much backing if those regions think the US will just abandon them in short order without giving them their own means of establishing deterrence. It would also inflame regional tensions -- I doubt the Turks would like a Kurdish pseudo-state on their border, and ditto for Pakistan in terms of a Baloch state.
The US does a full regime-change invasion and seeks to occupy the entire country to force an end once and for all. The smallest operation could be something with special forces to take out Iranian nuke stockpiles assuming US intelligence knew where they were, but even that would mostly just be can-kicking since they could just restart their nuclear program after the US left. The long-term solution would be to occupy everything, dismantle the nuclear program and missiles, put a Delcy Rodriguez in charge that's more amenable to US interests, then leave ASAP and cross their fingers that it doesn't all revert afterwards. Going this route would require months of preparation, hundreds of thousands of troops, and a large amount of political will that I doubt the US has.
I’m curious what Russia and China will do behind the scenes, and what they’re currently doing without our knowledge. They must realize that the war provides the chance to get anything they want from America if it continues to impact Israel. By backing Iran they may be able to secure Ukraine, Taiwan, maybe even Alaska and Hawaii (who knows?). They have the ultimate Trump Card — pun intended — if they are able to replenish and support the Iranian missile threat against Israel, as this would compel Israel to pressure the Americans they control into making enormous concessions to end the war. This is, unfortunately and obviously, the problem with having such a close relationship with a rogue regime, while allowing their loyalists to accrue so much wealth and power in your homeland.
Sir, I am normally very in favor of your takes but my autism compells me to say that there is a less than 0% chance that Hawaii or Alaska are on the table here.
This war isn't existential to the USA, and even in some hypothetical WW3 the USA would rather nuclear apocalypse the world than give up any of their soil (not blaming the USA here, Russia/China have the same stance, it's how you make MAD credible).
I am curious too. I think "not much" right now. I have a pretty high level of confidence in the USA security/spying apparatus in their ability to find stuff out. Less for China, but large weapon shipments are very hard to find (especially once exploded drone/missile components start raining down on GCC).
I think Russia was shipping some treats to Iran via the Caspian, but Israel hit the boat (I assume it was Iranian flagged).
The problem is, and credit to Trump here, there is a very credible threat of American reprisals for arming Iran.
Russia is having a great time with Iran being the center of attention. Every patriot missile that blows up over Tel-Aviv can't be used in Kiyv. And the massive deficiency means they'll be fighting a lot of other countries for them.
China has less to lose (although they don't want another trade war). But they also have been loving the "do nothing, win" strategy against Trump, which is quite effective. They look stable and trustworthy (they aren't) in contrast to the USA geopolitics shitshow. Put another way "Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.'"
As an aside, I'm still deeply confused what they thought they were doing with "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but they seem to have smartened up.
My impression was always that the wolf warrior stuff was entirely for domestic consumption, propelled perhaps a little further than intended by a small number of true believers.
That makes a lot of sense, because it was a pretty resounding failure of diplomacy at a time where China was starting to look a little less scary and a lot more stable when compared to Trump 1
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