On Thursday, March 27 Israel announced it had completed “a wave of extensive strikes in Isfahan targeting infrastructure.” In the same 24 hours, Israel killed Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the IRGC’s navy, along with the navy’s intelligence chief and the commander of Iran’s First Fleet. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly vowed to “intensify and expand” attacks. U.S. Central Command confirmed that more than two-thirds of Iran’s ballistic missile production facilities, drone production sites, and shipyards have been destroyed since the war began on Feb. 28.
The same week, the Pentagon ordered approximately 2,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to deploy to the Middle East, including the division’s commanding general, Maj. Gen. Brandon Tegtmeier, and his full headquarters staff. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS Tripoli entered Gulf waters on Friday. The 11th MEU departed San Diego three weeks ahead of schedule aboard the USS Boxer. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a congressional briefing that to secure Iran’s enriched uranium, “people are going to have to go and get it.”
Israel is shaping the battlefield. The force package is converging. And the administration’s senior diplomat is telling Congress, on the record, that a ground operation is the plan.
The public discussion has centered on whether a ground operation will happen. This article addresses a different question: if the force now in position executes, what does the operation look like? The answer is visible in joint forcible entry doctrine, counter-WMD operational history, and the specific composition of the force package itself. Together, they form an integrated operation to seize Iran’s stockpile of approximately 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, material sufficient for roughly eleven nuclear warheads. The IAEA has said the bulk of the material is beneath the rubble at Isfahan, with additional uranium at Natanz. A third site, the Fordow enrichment plant near Qom, was a suspected storage location, but an Iranian source told Reuters after the June 2025 strikes that the majority of enriched uranium had been moved out of Fordow before the bombs hit. Israel has been shaping Isfahan and Natanz with accelerating strikes throughout the current campaign. Fordow has not been struck. The shaping tells you where the ground operation is going.
The 82nd Airborne seizes an airfield near Isfahan
The 82nd Airborne Division drops paratroopers onto contested airfields and holds them until heavier forces arrive. Joint Publication 3-18, the Pentagon’s doctrine for forcible entry operations, describes the 82nd’s core mission as seizing and holding a lodgment so that larger, heavier, more lethal forces can expand combat operations. The division’s own quarterly training exercises culminate with an airborne joint forcible entry to seize airfields, evacuate citizens, and secure chemical weapons and critical infrastructure. The 82nd trains to take airfields and secure weapons of mass destruction. That is exactly what this mission requires.
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The Wall Street Journal reported that defense officials described the uranium seizure operation as requiring a local airfield for extraction. C-17 transport aircraft need a runway to land heavy equipment for handling radioactive material and to fly the uranium out of the country. That airfield must be seized and held. In practice, this means paratroopers dropping from C-17s and C-130s in darkness, securing the runway and perimeter within hours, and converting a seized Iranian airfield into a functioning American logistics hub before dawn. Isfahan and Natanz are both in central Iran, roughly 150 kilometers apart. A single seized airfield in Isfahan province could serve as the extraction point for both sites.
The paratroopers would fly directly from Fort Bragg, with no staging inside CENTCOM’s area of operations. After 28 days of Iranian ballistic missile strikes on U.S. facilities across the Gulf, fixed forward bases are liabilities. The 82nd’s Immediate Response Force maintains readiness to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours. It flies on C-17s directly from North Carolina to the objective. That is the design. On June 6, 1944, the 82nd flew from England directly into Normandy. No staging base. Straight to the objective. Four weeks of sustained air campaign have degraded Iran’s air defense network to the point where air corridors into central Iran are permissive for transport aircraft under fighter escort.
JSOC has been preparing for this mission for years
The Joint Special Operations Command conducts the main effort. Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 operators receive training in countering weapons of mass destruction, and U.S. Special Operations Command has been the lead group for the Pentagon’s counter-WMD mission since 2016. JSOC spent the 1990s preparing to respond to “loose nuke” scenarios and has expanded that capability since. Delta Force recruited heavy breachers from the Green Berets who practiced drilling through meters of earth to gain access to nuclear facilities. In its 2021 budget, the Pentagon requested $14.4 million for a dedicated facility to help JSOC train to raid “complex, hardened facility targets.” CNN reported that JSOC has contingency plans to either “render safe” the material underground or render the facility unusable, and that several elements of the U.S. government have teams designated as “render safe units” that can handle radiological material.
The 31st MEU spent approximately two weeks transiting from Okinawa to the Gulf. That transit time is rehearsal time. JSOC teams embedded within the MEU would use the shipboard environment to rehearse the specific entry sequences at Isfahan and Natanz, working from classified tunnel diagrams and satellite imagery. JSOC’s structure allows it to split into multiple assault elements hitting separate objectives simultaneously: one team at Isfahan’s tunnel complex, another at Natanz’s underground enrichment plant, both executing within the same operational window so that neither site has time to react to the other being hit. This is established practice. When the United States seized Venezuelan President Maduro in January, JSOC rode inside a Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed to the Caribbean. The MEU sat offshore. JSOC operators went in at night, reached Maduro’s compound, and extracted him. The MEU provided the security cordon and the aviation umbrella. JSOC conducted the raid. The same operational template applies here, with greater urgency: Venezuela was permissive. Maduro had no missiles. Iran has been firing ballistic missiles at American bases for four weeks. Every day of delay gives adversaries time to provide intelligence to Tehran. The operation would execute as soon as the force converges.
The Marines provide the outer security cordon
CNN reported that the operation would require “dozens if not hundreds of additional troops on the ground to help support the core special operations team,” including troops to secure the area and logistical support for working with nuclear material underground. That describes the MEU’s ground combat element: a reinforced Marine infantry battalion providing perimeter security around the nuclear sites while JSOC operates inside the tunnels. The MEU’s aviation, including F-35B stealth fighters, AH-1Z Cobras, and MV-22 Ospreys, provides close air support over the objective areas. If Iranian ground forces attempt to counterattack any of the perimeters, the Marines and their aviation are the immediate response, buying time for JSOC to complete the mission underground.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mick Mulroy told TIME that the scale of the deployment “tells me that there’s something bigger afoot.” The force now in theater, the 31st MEU, the 82nd Airborne, and JSOC, has the capacity to hit both Isfahan and Natanz simultaneously. The MEU provides the ground cordon and aviation at Isfahan, the main effort. The 82nd provides airfield security and conventional support at Natanz. JSOC assault elements, inserted by the 160th Night Stalkers, operate at both sites.
The operation converges simultaneously, at night
The 82nd Airborne launches from Fort Bragg. Somewhere over the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, C-17s carrying paratroopers and their equipment are en route to an airfield in central Iran. Simultaneously, JSOC inserts assault elements from the MEU or from forward positions using the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Army’s dedicated special operations helicopter unit known as the Night Stalkers, which specializes in nighttime penetration of hostile airspace. One element heads for Isfahan. Another heads for Natanz. The MEU’s ground element splits to establish perimeters at both sites. By the time Iran’s remaining command structure understands what is happening, the airfield is seized, the perimeters are set, and JSOC teams are already at the tunnel entrances at two locations simultaneously.
Joint Publication 3-18 defines “integrated forcible entry operations” as those in which amphibious, airborne, and air assault forcible entries are conducted simultaneously within the same operational area with mutually supporting objectives. That is the textbook definition of what this force package is configured to do.
Nighttime arrival denies Iran’s remaining command structure the ability to coordinate a response and limits the window for external actors, including China and Russia, to relay satellite imagery and intelligence to Tehran. American special operations forces own the night. The 160th SOAR exists to fly in darkness. The 82nd has trained for nighttime airfield seizures. The convergence of all three elements after dark compresses the gap between the moment Iran detects the operation and the moment it is already underway. Earlier Vision Times analysis documented the Midnight Hammer precedent: the White House publicly signaled a decision was “two weeks” away, then B-2 bombers launched from Missouri the next night and struck 48 hours later. President Trump has now extended his deadline on Iran’s energy infrastructure to April 6, ten days away.
Inside the tunnels: the hardest part of the operation
The uranium at Isfahan is stored in underground tunnels sealed by Tomahawk strikes during Midnight Hammer in June 2025. Iran has spent the intervening months clearing rubble and accessing the underground passages, then backfilling tunnel entrances with soil to protect the material and impede ground access.
JSOC teams entering Isfahan would need to breach through debris and reinforced soil, navigate a damaged tunnel complex where ceilings may have partially collapsed and ventilation may be compromised, and handle approximately 16 cylinders of uranium hexafluoride gas, each about 36 inches tall and weighing roughly 25 kilograms. The cylinders are comparable in size to large scuba tanks. They are light enough to be carried by hand, but the material inside is a corrosive gas that reacts violently with moisture. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi described the operation as “very challenging” but “not impossible.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned that interaction between uranium hexafluoride and water vapor could produce toxic chemical contaminants in the form of a high-velocity jet.
Axios reported two options under discussion: removing the material from Iran entirely, or bringing nuclear experts to dilute it on site. Either option requires time underground. The entire outer operation, the 82nd at the airfield, the Marines at the perimeter, the MEU’s aviation overhead, exists to buy that time. The Project Honey Badger precedent from the hostage crisis era envisioned airlifting excavation equipment, including a heavy bulldozer, into Iran for exactly this kind of underground access problem. The C-17s landing at the seized airfield would carry the same kind of equipment.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers the intelligence community has “high confidence” in the uranium’s location. The surveillance is constant. What remains is the physical act of retrieval.
The division headquarters is the command architecture for this operation
The deployment of Maj. Gen. Tegtmeier’s division headquarters confirms the scale of what is being planned. As earlier Vision Times analysis explained, a division headquarters deploys when a two-star general needs to coordinate multiple subordinate units across multiple objectives simultaneously: Marine operations, Army airborne operations, and special operations forces all executing within the same operational window. A single-site raid at Isfahan would require a brigade commander and a colonel’s staff. Simultaneous raids at Isfahan and Natanz, with a seized airfield serving both, with Marines split across perimeters, with JSOC elements at two underground facilities at once, requires a division headquarters. That is what was deployed this week.
Fox News reported that Tegtmeier’s headquarters is deploying to “establish forward command and control for potential joint forcible-entry missions.” The presence of the division headquarters in theater means the command element is forward. It can execute on any day, at any hour.
The force was built to execute
The strongest counterargument concerns the tunnels themselves. The underground passages at Isfahan were damaged by Tomahawk strikes, partially cleared by Iranian workers, then buried again under soil. If the tunnels are more degraded than intelligence assessments suggest, JSOC teams face longer timelines underground, more complex breaching problems, and greater exposure to hazardous materials. Every additional hour inside the facility extends the window for an Iranian counterattack against the perimeter.
That risk is real, and it explains why the conventional force package is as large as it is. The 82nd holds the airfield. The Marines hold the perimeter. The aviation provides overhead protection. The force was sized for the hardest version of this operation.
Twenty-eight days of air campaign have destroyed more than two-thirds of Iran’s missile production facilities and drone factories. Israel has killed the commander of the IRGC’s navy, the navy’s intelligence chief, and the commander of Iran’s First Fleet in a single strike. The supreme leader is dead. The air defense network that existed on Feb. 27 does not exist on March 27. The environment is more permissive for a ground operation today than it will be at any point in the future.
The 31st MEU entered Gulf waters on Friday. The 82nd Airborne has its deployment orders. Israel is shaping Isfahan and Natanz. If this operation succeeds, the uranium is loaded onto C-17s at the seized airfield and flown out of Iran. The 440 kilograms of enriched material that could have produced eleven nuclear warheads leaves the country in the cargo holds of American transport aircraft. Every component of the force assembled this week, from the paratroopers to the Marines to the special operators to the two-star general commanding them, maps to a specific role in making that happen. The question is no longer whether the United States has the capability to take Iran’s uranium. As of this week, it does.
Commentary by Andrew Jensen