The United States is actively planning potential special forces operations to seize or destroy Iran's nuclear stockpile, according to multiple senior administration officials who spoke to Axios, marking a dramatic escalation in military planning that would involve American boots on Iranian soil for the first time.
The planning, which sources describe as serious but not yet authorized, would represent the most ambitious and risky ground operation the U.S. military has undertaken since the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But the scale and complexity dwarf that operation. Where the bin Laden raid involved approximately two dozen Navy SEALs hitting a single compound, operations against Iran's dispersed nuclear infrastructure would require hundreds of special operators targeting multiple heavily defended sites simultaneously.
"This is not Abbottabad," said one retired senior Pentagon official familiar with the planning. "This is not even Osirak," referring to Israel's successful 1981 airstrike on Iraq's nuclear reactor. "This would be the most complex special operations mission in American history, conducted in denied territory against a sophisticated adversary with significant air defenses and a large, capable military."
The primary targets would include the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, both buried under mountains and protected by multiple layers of air defenses. Secondary targets include research facilities in Tehran and Isfahan, as well as suspected weapons design sites that intelligence has identified. The challenge is not merely reaching these sites—it is doing so simultaneously to prevent from moving or hiding materials once the operation begins.
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