WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has privately expressed serious interest in deploying U.S. troops on the ground inside ofIran, according to two U.S. officials, a former U.S. official and another person with knowledge of the conversations.
Trump has discussed the idea of deploying ground troops with aides and Republican officials outside the White House while outlining his vision for a post-war Iran in which Iran’s uranium is secure and the U.S. and a new Iranian regime cooperate on oil production similar to how the U.S. and Venezuela are, the sources said.
The president’s comments expressing serious interest in deploying ground troops have not focused on a large-scale ground invasion of Iran, but rather on the idea of a small contingent of U.S. troops that would be used for specific strategic purposes, the U.S. officials, the former U.S. official and the person with knowledge of the discussions said. They said Trump has not made any decisions or given any orders related to ground troops.
“This story is based on assumptions from anonymous sources who are not part of the President’s national security team and are clearly not read into these discussions,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump always, wisely keeps all options open, but anyone trying to insinuate he is in favor of one option or another proves they have no real seat at the table.”
Publicly, Trump has not ruled out putting U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iran, though the war has so far consisted only of an air campaign. His private discussions about the idea show a president perhaps more willing to consider taking such a step than his public comments on the issue so far have suggested. Any deployment of American troops inside of Iran could increase the scale and scope of the war — and escalate the risks to American forces.
Since the war began on Saturday, six U.S. service members have been killed and 18 wounded in counterattacks from Iran, according to the Pentagon.
Trump has privately described to aides and Republican officials outside the White House that his ideal outcome in Iran is one like the emerging dynamic between the U.S. and Venezuela since American special forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January, the current U.S. officials and former U.S. official said. In post-Maduro Venezuela, the U.S. backed a new president, Delcy Rodríguez, under the condition that she implement policies that Trump views as favorable to the U.S., including that the U.S. benefits from Venezuela’s oil production.
The president said in aninterview with the New York Postthis week, “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” He said while other presidents have ruled out boots on the ground, “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”
Foreign policy experts offered various scenarios in which the president might choose to deploy U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.
“You could envision them doing some sort of special operations insertions if there were targets that they absolutely needed to take out or reduce but didn’t lend themselves to bombardment,” said Joel Rayburn, a former Trump administration official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “That’s the kind of thing where you do an insertion, you attack a target, or conduct a raid, and then you get out.”
Source: Drudge Report
