IRGC Threat to U.S. Bases and Call for Ground Assault Raise New Escalation Risk
As Iran fires missiles and drones at U.S. facilities across the Middle East, a former Iranian foreign minister has publicly urged ground offensives to seize American soldiers in Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain. The comments, while not official policy, reveal how far some voices in Tehran are willing to push in a confrontation already testing U.S. force protection. This piece examines what has been said, what is being done on the ground, and how such rhetoric could shape the next phase of the crisis.
The barrage of missiles and drones between Iran and the United States is now being matched by a barrage of rhetoric about how far to take the fight. As Iranian forces target U.S. bases from Jordan to Bahrain, a former Iranian foreign minister has gone on record urging something far more dangerous: ground invasions of American facilities in Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain, with the explicit goal of capturing U.S. soldiers.
Manouchehr Mottaki, who served as Iran’s foreign minister from 2005 to 2010, has publicly argued that instead of waiting for a ground offensive against Iran, Tehran should launch its own ground operations against U.S. bases in neighboring states and seize around 200 American troops to force Washington to halt the war. His words do not amount to a government order, but they reveal a current within Iran’s elite discourse that sees U.S. personnel not just as targets to be deterred from striking Iran, but as potential bargaining chips.
On the ground, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is already pursuing an aggressive campaign against U.S. and allied facilities using standoff weapons. New waves of Kheibar Shekan, Zolfaghar and Emad ballistic missiles, Shahed‑136 drones and likely Paveh cruise missiles have been launched at bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait. U.S. positions at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base have taken hits to an aircraft hangar and housing units, injuring American soldiers as they slept, according to U.S. media reports. Around 100 U.S. personnel have been wounded in Iranian attacks since early July, with nearly all returning to duty.
For the nearly 50,000 American troops stationed across the Middle East, the combination of physical attacks and talk of ground raids raises the stakes of every shift. Force protection drills designed for rocket and drone fire now must take into account the risk—even if still low—of more audacious attempts to breach perimeters, whether by proxy militias or more directly attributable Iranian units. Families back home watch the news not just for casualty numbers, but for clues as to whether their relatives might be drawn into a crisis far larger than the missions they trained for.
Host governments in Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain face a different kind of pressure. Their security partnerships with Washington are pillars of national defense and, in some cases, regime security. Yet Mottaki’s comments underscore how these same bases are perceived in Tehran as forward operating hubs for strikes on Iran and, increasingly, as legitimate targets in their own right. The idea of ground incursions, however remote in operational planning today, forces Gulf and Iraqi leaders to consider what their streets would look like if images emerged of U.S. soldiers captured on their soil.
Strategically, the calls for capturing American troops intersect with Iran’s broader toolkit of pressure: missile salvos, cyber operations, maritime harassment and influence over non‑state militias. The logic is that the United States is casualty‑averse and politically constrained, and that raising the human cost—especially through prisoners of war—could crack Washington’s will to sustain strikes. That logic cuts both ways. A successful kidnapping raid would likely ignite intense domestic pressure in the United States for a decisive response, potentially widening the conflict beyond the calibrated tit‑for‑tat strikes seen so far.
A key insight from this phase of the crisis is that escalation does not always start with a secret order; it can start with a slogan that makes more extreme courses of action thinkable. When figures like Mottaki publicly legitimize the idea of seizing U.S. soldiers, they shift the boundaries of what hardliners can propose behind closed doors, even if current decision‑makers still favor standoff strikes.
The next indicators to watch will be whether any Iran‑aligned militias around U.S. bases in Iraq or Syria change their operational patterns, whether Iranian state media amplify or distance themselves from talk of ground offensives, and how U.S. commanders adjust defensive postures at exposed installations. Any attempt—successful or thwarted—to breach a U.S. facility’s perimeter or ambush a convoy with the clear intent to capture personnel would mark a dangerous crossing of a line that both sides have, so far, treated with caution.
Sources
- OSINT