Iran: Lessons from Task Force 2-7 Infantry (OIF 1) and the Path Forward

The Enemy We Didn’t Name

In 2003, I commanded Task Force 2-7 Infantry during the invasion of Iraq. We accomplished our mission with precision, dismantling Saddam’s regime in weeks. After annihilating Republican Guard Forces east of Baghdad International Airport, we were called to reinforce 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized). We traveled around western Baghdad to link up with 2nd Brigade, enhanced their combat power, and destroyed enemy forces at Objective Curley – a decisive action that allowed the Brigade to continue its attack north into Baghdad. This operation was so significant that MG Blount, Commanding General, 3ID (M), accompanied the Task Force to ensure enablers were available to continue exploiting our success and maintain momentum into the capital. As we transitioned to executing security operations in downtown Baghdad and other areas throughout the country, we began seeing the early signs of a different kind of enemy. But it was the follow-on forces, those who rotated in after our initial deployment, who truly faced an enemy we were never briefed on: well-funded, well equipped fighters using tactics and weapons that didn’t come from Saddam’s defeated army. They carried Iranian made explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) that could punch through our armored vehicles and coordinated strikes with a sophistication that suggested training far beyond what local insurgents could muster –intelligence reports repeatedly traced funding and command structures back across the eastern border.

We weren’t just fighting Iraqi insurgents. Follow on forces were fighting Iran’s forward deployed forces, and most Americans still don’t realize it.

The Strategic Reality

Critics claim the Iraq War was about oil or eliminating WMDs. The truth is more complex and more strategic. Iraq positioned the United States adjacent to the greatest long-term threat to American interests and regional stability: the Islamic Republic of Iran. Whether by design or necessity, Iraq became the theater where Iranian ambitions would be contested.

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has orchestrated a campaign of terror against American interests. The 1983 Beirut barracks bombing killed 241 U.S. servicemembers. The 1996 Khobar Towers attack claimed 19 U.S. airmen. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Tehran funded and directed Hezbollah operations across the Middle East. In Iraq, they provided the EFPs that killed hundreds of American soldiers. They armed and trained the militias that destabilized Iraq even after our withdrawal.

The pattern is undeniable. The threat is persistent. And it continues today.

The Greatest Mistake: Disbanding the Iraqi Army

One of the biggest strategic mistakes of the war was the decision to disband the Iraqi Army. Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seized this opportunity with both hands. The moment we dissolved Iraq’s military, Tehran began coordinating with Iraqi Shias in the south, exploiting the power vacuum we had inadvertently created.

This decision ignored a crucial historical reality: Saddam Hussein, despite his brutality, had successfully maintained a military force that included both Sunni and Shia soldiers. They fought together. They served together. For eight bloody years during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, Iraqi Arabs – both Sunni and Shia – stood shoulder to shoulder against Iranian aggression. That war told the story of who the real enemy of Iraq’s Arabs was. It wasn’t each other – it was Iran.

Saddam understood what we failed to grasp: Iraqi national identity, when properly cultivated, transcended sectarian divisions when facing external threats. The Iran-Iraq War demonstrated that Iraqi Shias would fight against Iranian Shias when their nation was threatened. They saw themselves as Arabs first, Iraqis second, and only then as Shias. They recognized Persian Iran as a foreign threat to Arab Iraq.

By disbanding the Iraqi Army, we eliminated the one institution that had successfully bridged Iraq’s sectarian divide and had proven itself capable of resisting Iranian influence. We removed hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers from their posts, stripped them of their dignity and livelihood, and left them vulnerable to Iranian recruitment. Worse, we destroyed the institutional memory and national cohesion that had kept Iraq unified against external threats for decades.

Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime couldn’t have asked for a better gift. Within months, Iranian intelligence officers and Quds Force operatives were moving freely through southern Iraq, meeting with Shia leaders, distributing money and weapons, and building the militia networks that would plague our forces for years. They weren’t creating sectarian divisions from scratch, they were exploiting the vacuum we created by destroying the one institution that had successfully managed those divisions.

What I Saw on the Ground

As TF 2-7 Infantry pushed into Iraq and established security operations in downtown Baghdad and other areas, we secured weapons caches that told a story. The equipment and weapons were too sophisticated, too uniform, too organized to be the remnants of Saddam’s defeated army or the desperate scavenging of local fighters. Documentationsuggested payment structures for combatants rather than organic resistance. At the time, we knew these fighters were being supported and directed by an organized source, probably a nation-state, but the full picture wasn’t yet clear. Looking back now with the benefit of intelligence reports and years of analysis, the source was Iran. They were positioning proxies to bog down American forces and extend Tehran’s influence.

During our security operations throughout Baghdad, we observed patterns that would become clearer to follow on forces. The sophistication of the attacks, the quality of the weapons, the coordination between seemingly disparate groups, all suggested external support and direction. What we encountered during our initial operations was merely the beginning of what would reveal itself as a sustained Iranian campaign.

The sectarian violence that followed wasn’t organic, it was cultivated. Iran understood what many in Washington refused to acknowledge: they didn’t need to defeat the U.S. military directly. They just needed to make Iraq ungovernable long enough for American political will to collapse.

They were right.

When follow on forces found themselves fighting block by block in cities we already cleared and secured, when roadside bombs became the leading cause of casualties during routine security patrols, when militias we disarmed somehow reappeared with newer and more lethal weapons, Iran was the source. The soldiers conducting security operations throughout Baghdad and other cities increasingly recognized the pattern. They were spending blood and treasure to ensure America’s presence in Iraq would be costly, chaotic, and ultimately unsustainable. Follow on forces saw what we only glimpsed: a fully developed Iranian strategy to bleed American forces through proxy warfare.

The Shia militias that emerged in southern Iraq weren’t spontaneous uprisings of oppressed populations. They were organized, funded, and directed by Tehran. The same Shias who had fought against Iran in the 1980s were now being recruited by Iran in the 2000s – not because their loyalties had fundamentally changed, but because we had eliminated the national institutions that had channeled their identities as Iraqis rather than as sectarian actors.

Unfinished Business

The fundamental nature of the Iranian regime hasn’t changed. Today, Iran continues developing nuclear capabilities, maintains proxy forces throughout Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and threatens freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. The regime provides material support to terrorist organizations and conducts operations designed to expel American influence from the region.

The same regime that ordered those EFPs into Iraq, that paid bounties for American casualties, that executed thousands of its own citizens for demanding freedom, still rules in Tehran. And unlike the 1970s, when Iran under the Shah was a stabilizing force and American ally in the region, today’s Iran actively works to destabilize the entire Middle East.

The Shah’s government, for all its flaws, maintained diplomatic relations with the West, promoted economic development, and advanced women’s rights. Modern Iran executes women for not wearing hijabs, hangs political dissidents, and exports revolutionary ideology. The contrast couldn’t be starker.

The Existential Threat: Nuclear Breakout

The primary imperative for action against Iran is not humanitarian intervention or democracy promotion. It is the prevention of an Iranian nuclear weapon – a threat that would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East and create cascading instability that would threaten global security.

We must learn from Iraq’s lessons, but we cannot afford to repeat its mistakes. In 2003, we debated the existence of weapons of mass destruction until the situation resulted in a full-scale ground invasion. With Iran, we cannot delay until the threat fully materializes. Once Iran achieves nuclear breakout capability, the strategic calculus changes irrevocably.

A nuclear armed Iran gains immediate and devastating leverage against its neighbors, the United States, and the global economy. Tehran would possess a nuclear umbrella under which it could expand its proxy networks, intensify its destabilization campaigns, and threaten shipping lanes that carry a significant portion of the world’s oil supply – all while being functionally immune to conventional military response.

The regional consequences would be catastrophic and immediate. Saudi Arabia has already indicated it would pursue nuclear weapons if Iran obtains them. The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey would likely follow. Within a decade, the Middle East, the world’s most volatile region, would become a multipolar nuclear powder keg where religious extremism, territorial disputes, and sectarian hatred are measured in megatons rather than rhetoric.

This is not speculation. It is the stated position of regional powers who understand that a nuclear Iran represents an existential threat to Sunni Arab states and Israel alike. The nuclear arms race that would follow Iranian breakout would create instability on a scale that makes current Middle Eastern conflicts look manageable by comparison.

Moreover, Iran’s track record of proliferation makes the threat even more acute. This is a regime that armed Hezbollah with over 150,000 rockets, provided EFPs to kill American soldiers, and arms Houthi rebels in Yemen with ballistic missiles. What would they provide to proxies once they possess nuclear technology? The risk of nuclear terrorism stops being theoretical and becomes inevitable.

Economic implications extend globally. Twenty percent of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. A nuclear Iran could close that strait with impunity, sending oil prices to unprecedented levels, triggering worldwide recession, and holding the global economy hostage to Tehran’s revolutionary ambitions. The economic leverage alone would reshape geopolitics in Iran’s favor without them firing a single shot.

We face a narrow window of opportunity.  The current internal instability presents an opportunity to eliminate this threat and neutralize their leaders with lower risk than the alternatives. All engagements are inherently risky; this would come with military and intelligence dominance.  We learned from Iraq that once reach breakout capacity is reached, and cross that threshold, military options become exponentially more complex, costly, and dangerous.

Why Regime Change Is the Only Solution

Some advocate for targeted strikes against nuclear facilities. This approach is insufficient and potentially counterproductive. Iran has dispersed and hardened its nuclear infrastructure across dozens of sites, some buried deep underground. Striking these facilities without eliminating the regime that builds them simply delays the inevitable while galvanizing Iranian nationalism and providing justification for accelerated development.

Limited military action against nuclear sites addresses symptoms while ignoring the disease. The same regime leadership that built Natanz and Fordow will rebuild them. The same scientific expertise will reconstitute the program. The same revolutionary ideology that drove nuclear ambition for four decades will remain. Within years, possibly months, Iran would resume its march toward nuclear weapons – more determined, more careful, and more dispersed.

Regime change is not about liberating the Iranian people or promoting democracy. It is the only strategy that permanently eliminates the nuclear threat. Only by removing the Islamic Republic’s leadership structure can we ensure that Iran’s nuclear program is dismantled beyond reconstitution.

This is fundamentally different from Iraq. In 2003, we debated whether WMDs existed. Our failure to finish the job from the Gulf War left a vacuum that allowed Saddam Hussein to control the narrative. With Iran, there is no debate; their nuclear program is documented, ongoing, and approaching weaponization. The question is not whether the threat exists, but whether we act before it becomes unstoppable.

What Victory Requires

Military action against Iran must be comprehensive and decisive, focused on the singular objective of eliminating nuclear capability and the regime pursuing it.

• First, total destruction of nuclear infrastructure. Every known nuclear facility, research center, uranium enrichment site, and weapons development program must be destroyed simultaneously. This includes Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan, Arak, and dozens of other sites. Half measures guarantee program reconstitution.
• Second, decapitation of regime leadership. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership, Supreme Leader, senior clerics, and Quds Force commanders who direct nuclear policy must be eliminated or captured. The command structure that has pursued nuclear weapons for forty years cannot remain intact.
• Third, elimination of offensive military capability. Iran’s ballistic missile program, air defense systems, naval forces, and offensive military capability must be destroyed to prevent both reconstitution of the nuclear program and retaliation against regional partners. This includes destroying the infrastructure that supports proxy warfare across the region.
• Fourth, coalition support and regional involvement. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE possess both the capability and the motivation to contribute to operations. Regional partners understand the nuclear threat intimately and will provide basing, intelligence, and operational support. This cannot be a unilateral American operation.
• Fifth, immediate border security. Learning from Iraq, preventing reconstitution requires sealing borders with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey to prevent regime leadership from escaping, nuclear materials from being dispersed, and external support from flowing in. Regional partners must commit forces to border control operations.
• Sixth, avoiding prolonged occupation. The Iraq mistake was attempting to rebuild a nation. The mission in Iran is narrower: destroy the nuclear program and eliminate the regime that built it. Post conflict governance is not an American responsibility beyond ensuring no nuclear reconstitution occurs. Regional powers have greater stake and should bear greater burden for what follows.

Acting Before It’s Too Late – Timing is Everything

In 2003, we waited until the situation engaged full scale invasion with hundreds of thousands of troops and prolonged occupation. The cost was trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

With Iran, we still have the advantage of timing. Their nuclear program has not yet achieved weaponization. Their military, while substantial, cannot withstand American airpower. Their regime, while entrenched, lacks the popular support that would enable sustained resistance. Their economy is desperate.

But this window is closing. Every month of delay allows Iran to further enrich uranium, harden facilities, and disperse capabilities. Every diplomatic negotiation buys Tehran time to move closer to breakout. Every economic sanction that fails to change behavior simply proves to the regime that it can outlast Western resolve.

The soldiers who served in Task Force 2-7 Infantry and especially the follow-on forces who died from Iranian weapons deserve to know their sacrifice wasn’t in vain. When I think of the young men I commanded and those who came after, the ones who came home in flag draped coffins because of Iranian EFPs during security operations in Baghdad and throughout Iraq, I think about what we owe them. We owe them completion of the mission. We owe them a Middle East where Iranian aggression is finally checked, where American soldiers aren’t targets for Tehran’s proxies, where nuclear weapons don’t fall into the hands of the regime that killed their brothers in arms.

The Choice Before Us

We’re at war with a regime that has killed Americans for four decades. A regime that exports terrorism as state policy. A regime approaching nuclear breakout capability. A regime that won’t stop until forced to stop.

The question isn’t whether to confront Iran – we’ve been at war with them since 1979, whether we acknowledge it or not. The question is whether we act now, while we still can, or wait until their nuclear capability makes action exponentially more costly and dangerous.

We can act today with airpower, special operations forces, and regional coalition partners to eliminate the nuclear threat permanently. Or we can wait until Iran achieves breakout, triggers a regional nuclear arms race, and forces us to choose between accepting a nuclear armed enemy or fighting a war that makes Iraq look like a minor skirmish.

History will judge whether we had the courage to confront this threat while we still possessed the advantage, or whether we allowed diplomatic paralysis and strategic patience to deliver nuclear weapons to a regime that has proven it will use any weapon at its disposal to advance its revolutionary ideology and kill Americans.

The United States possesses the most powerful military in the world. We have the capability to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and remove the current regime. What we need is the political will to act before the window closes.

The men and women of our Armed Forces stand ready. The question is whether our nation’s leadership will give them the mission, the resources, and the strategic clarity to finally end this nuclear threat. Not with half measures, not with strategic patience, another round of negotiations, or payouts, but with the decisive action necessary to eliminate the most dangerous weapons program on earth before it reaches fruition.

The clock is ticking. Iran is enriching uranium. Every day we delay is a day closer to nuclear breakout. The time to act is now, while we still can.

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