WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has privately expressed a strong interest in deploying US troops inside Iran, according to two US officials, a former US official and another person familiar with the talks.
Trump discussed the idea of sending troops to the ground with aides and Republican officials outside the White House while outlining his vision for a post-war Iran in which Iran’s uranium is secured and the US and the new Iranian regime cooperate in oil production in a similar way to the US and Venezuela, the sources said.
The president’s comments expressing a strong interest in the deployment of ground forces are not focused on a large-scale global attack on Iran, but instead focus on the idea of a small group of US troops that will be used for specific strategic purposes, said US officials, a former US official and a person familiar with the talks. They said Trump has not made any decisions or given any orders related to ground troops.
“This story is based on speculation from anonymous sources who are not part of the President’s national security team and it is unclear whether they were read in these discussions,” White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump is always smart, he keeps all options open, but anyone who tries to say that he agrees with one option or another proves that they don’t have a real seat at the table.”
In public, Trump did not decide to put “boots on the ground” of the US in Iran, although the war so far has only an air campaign. His private discussions on the idea indicate that the president is perhaps more willing to consider taking this step than he has said publicly on the matter thus far. Any deployment of US troops inside Iran would increase the scale and scope of the war – and increase the risk to US forces.
Since the war began on Saturday, six US soldiers have been killed and 18 wounded during the Iranian attack, according to the Pentagon.
Trump has privately explained to aides and Republican officials outside the White House that his favorable outcome on Iran is due to the escalation between the US and Venezuela since US special forces captured Nicolas Maduro in January, US officials and a former US official said. In post-Maduro Venezuela, the US is supporting the new president, Delcy Rodríguez, on the condition that he implements policies that Trump considers favorable to the US, including that the US benefits from Venezuela’s oil production.
The president said in an interview with the New York Post this week, “I have no yips about boots on the ground.” He said while other presidents were pulling their boots off the ground, “I say ‘maybe you don’t need them,'” [or] ‘if necessary.’”
Foreign policy experts have offered various scenarios in which the president could choose to deploy US troops on the ground in Iran.
“You can imagine them doing some kind of special operations deployment if there were targets that they really needed to take out or reduce but not bombard themselves with,” said Joel Rayburn, a former Trump administration official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank based in Washington, DC. “It’s that kind of thing where you enter, attack a target, or attack, and then exit.”
But Rayburn said such a situation is very different from what many Americans think of when they think of sending in ground troops or putting “boots on the ground,” and that so far he hasn’t seen any situations arise that would require such a move.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, executive director of the Iran program at the Washington, DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that in the event of the fall of the Iranian regime, the US military could be used on the ground there to try to help facilitate a transition between the US and Iran, such as in Venezuela or to help keep track of Iran’s uranium, which is believed to be under its nuclear facilities.
“You don’t want it to be a failed nuclear weapons market,” Taleblu said of Iran.
Nate Swanson, senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, DC, said the US could rethink its military options if Iran “thinks it can win a war of attrition.” Such a situation could lead the president to send ground troops to Iran or arm opponents of the Iranian regime. Trump is considering whether to arm anti-government protesters.
In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump suggested that he is not thinking too much about a global attack on Iran at this time. He said he wants a new leadership in Iran that approves and said he expects the war, which began on Saturday, to drag on for four to five weeks while leaving open the possibility that it could go on indefinitely.
White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said on Wednesday that the US underground military is an option that remains on the president’s table, although “it is not part of the plan for this term.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Thursday that Iran is ready for US ground forces. “We are waiting for them,” Araghchi said, adding that “we hope we can face them, and that would be a big disaster for them.” “We are prepared to face any situation,” Araghchi said.
