President Donald Trump is pressing ahead with his campaign against Iran, despite criticism that the conflict helped drive major Republican losses in last week’s midterm elections.
His administration is widening efforts to restrict the trade routes Tehran uses to rebuild its military during the war. The initiative, called Task Force Iron Gate, focuses on land crossings and routes across the Caspian Sea—supply lines that remain available despite the U.S. naval blockade.
The approach is part of a broader effort to increase pressure on Iran without immediately resuming large-scale military operations. Some analysts say it could instead raise the risk of escalation, rather than quickly bring Tehran to the negotiating table.
“We have Operation Iron Gate that just went into effect. That means nothing comes in by land,” Trump said Sunday.
The task force, based at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa and staffed by about 20 people, appears to be taking a more measured approach than Trump’s description suggests.
Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it is not a deployable special operations unit. He described it as a coordination hub bringing together military, civilian and intelligence efforts.
Its near-term work is likely to involve gathering information on activity along Iran’s borders and building regional cooperation that could help enforce sanctions and disrupt shipments, Nadimi said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that economic pressure could achieve the administration’s aims without further military escalation.
“We don’t need to conduct military strikes if we’re achieving the same objective through economic means and economic pressure,” Rubio told reporters Tuesday.
Rubio rejected the idea that Washington and Tehran were locked in a stalemate. Sanctions, the naval blockade and other measures, he said, were steadily weakening Iran.
“They’re bleeding. They’re bleeding economically,” Rubio said. “It is an increased pressure on Iran that continues to grow every day.”
The effort comes amid signs that the war was a political liability for Republicans. In a voter survey, 34% of respondents said the Iran war was a crucial factor in their House vote, and roughly six in 10 said the United States had been wrong to take military action against Iran.
A separate survey conducted around Election Day found that 68% considered avoiding a prolonged conflict in Iran very important. Asked to choose between ending U.S. military involvement to bring down gas prices and restarting military action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, 61% favored ending involvement and 35% favored renewed action.
Four days after the election, CENTCOM announced Iron Gate, extending the pressure campaign to overland routes that could reduce the impact of the naval blockade.
The command said the task force would coordinate efforts to disrupt the movement of advanced weapons, dual-use technology, sanctioned materials and illicit revenue across Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea.
“We will not allow the Iranian regime to rebuild its weapons factories or replenish its arsenal with materials smuggled across its borders,” CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said when announcing the initiative.
CENTCOM has not provided further details about how the operation will work.
The task is complicated by the size and terrain of Iran’s borders. The country shares roughly 6,000 kilometers of land borders with Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan, Nadimi said. There are dozens of official crossings, but goods can also move through mountainous areas and desert terrain.
“It will be extremely difficult to know where and how things get in or out of Iran,” Nadimi said.
How well Iron Gate works will also depend heavily on governments in the region. The task force could develop ties with neighboring countries’ military and intelligence services to identify and disrupt suspicious shipments, he said. Turkey and Pakistan have already restricted some goods crossing into Iran, contributing to long truck queues and increased shipping costs.
Even with cooperation from neighboring governments, Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are likely to seek ways around the restrictions.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the effort should not be measured by whether it can stop all overland trade immediately.
Instead, he said, the aim is to make shipments more expensive, put pressure on foreign companies and individuals involved in Iranian trade, and give Washington greater leverage.
“This is literally akin to boxing in the Islamic Republic,” Taleblu said.
Land routes have become more important as Iran’s other connections to the outside world have narrowed. The country’s missile program still relies on foreign materials, including fuel precursors and high-strength steel, Taleblu said. China and Russia are important sources, but Iraq, Turkey and Pakistan also serve as significant regional routes.
Nadimi called any serious effort to restrict Iran’s land trade a “mid- to long-term project” and said Tehran may initially respond by becoming more aggressive.
Taleblu offered a similar caution: “It is entirely plausible that you squeeze them hard enough that they feel like the only way to throw off the strangulation is to throw a punch.”
The administration is therefore trying to increase its leverage over Iran without reigniting the kind of full-scale fighting many voters said they wanted to avoid. Trump, though, has described the goal in stark terms: “Nothing comes in by land.”
