I don’t believe they have any options on it anyway — besides the problems you stated, they’d have to build something capable of taking apart and putting together the rather heavy sections, and then get that device into orbit, and for that matter, would have to sell the US and other participants on the idea.
I’d prefer that the whole thing not just get dumped into the Pacific — which will be the plan at the retirement dinner — but if the Russian sections could be removed, I’d be in favor of some private industry refurb and maintenance of the non-Russian parts of the station.
If I really got my wish, I’d like to see the Russian parts removed, some upgrades and necessary repairs, and then the whole thing sent, unmanned, on a long slow trip to rendezvous with Mars and enter orbit around it. That would give manned Mars missions a destination until such time as surface landings are feasible. It will take practice and shakedown cruises to get there and back reliably, just as the lunar missions did.
“the whole thing sent, unmanned, on a long slow trip to rendezvous with Mars and enter orbit around it.”
Conceptually that would certainly be interesting. In practice, however, it appears to be virtually impossible due to the ISS maintenance requirements. It has sometimes been quite difficult to keep the ISS functioning in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), much less the more difficult supply requirements of deep space. Taking the revamped ISS outside the protection of the Van Allen Belt in LEO would place the ISS in a deep space environment where it lacks adequate radiation protection for crews and equipment. Such requirements should be kept in mind for the future with the construction of an American national space station that could then be multi-purposed for a future Mars mission or a mission placing the station at a Lagrangian Point or more specifically Earth-moon libration point 2 (EML-2).
See:
NASA Eyes Plan for Deep-Space Outpost Near the Moon
by Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist | February 10, 2012 07:07am ET
http://www.space.com/14518-nasa-moon-deep-space-station-astronauts.html