Donald Trump will not rule out sending American troops into Iran after launching a massive bombing campaign that the president says could last several weeks or longer.
The president told The New York Post that he doesn’t have the “yips” when it comes to sending Americans to war, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the administration won’t be “dumb about it.”
But neither leaders are ruling out the possibility that American armed forces could be on the ground in a conflict that experts warn could spill out into a wider war, with destabilizing repercussions throughout the region and beyond.
Without clear objectives and with dubious justifications, the administration is seeking “regime implosion,” fueled by Trump’s “wishful thinking” that a relentless military campaign will open the door for the Iranian people to fill a power vacuum, according to Trita Parsi, co-founder of Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a foreign policy think tank.
Trump’s mission dovetails with Israel’s hope to take Iran “off the geopolitical chessboard,” but “the difficulty the administration is having is not necessarily that they don’t have that goal — it’s that they can’t find a justification for it,” Parsi told reporters Monday. “They’re grasping at straws.”
The administration has struggled to clearly define its objectives, with Hegseth declaring that the conflict is not a “regime change war” while the president says the goal of his campaign is “freedom for the people.”
Asked by a reporter Monday what Hegseth would say to “people also want to know what they’re sending their men and women to war for,” and whether he was concerned the conflict could spiral out into a longer war, the secretary shot back, “Did you not hear my remarks?”
“We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear-eyed, as the president has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies in the past that recklessly pulled us into things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives,” he said.
Middle East experts have compared the post-attack attempts to justify the campaign to the run-up to the Iraq War.
“Back then, we were sold a bill of goods: fabricated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, dire warnings of mushroom clouds over American cities, and assurances that toppling Saddam Hussein would be quick, cheap and transformative for the region,” said U.S. Army veteran Naveed Shah, political director for Common Defense, which advocates for veterans and their families.
“But it was all a mirage,” he told reporters Monday.
The administration has sought to crush Iran’s military capacity and prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but “there is no evidence to justify military strikes based on the grounds of nuclear weaponization,” according to Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association.
Iran’s ballistic missile capacity has not advanced so significantly to constitute an imminent threat to the United States, and there is no evidence that Iran is enriching any uranium to weapons-grade levels, Davenport told reporters Monday.
“Iran’s nuclear program cannot be bombed away, Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away, and even if there’s regime change, Iran’s program will still pose a proliferation risk,” she said.
In June, Trump claimed to have “completely, totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in a series of missile strikes and bombings.
Complicating the basis for the attacks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed Monday that strikes were in response to an “imminent threat” and described the administration’s campaign as preemptive.
“We were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” he said.
The administration’s objective is to “destroy” Iran’s missile capability, which he said is being used as a “shield” to give it room to develop a nuclear weapon.
But Davenport said the Trump administration has now put itself into a position where nuclear scientists and materials could end up in the wrong hands without boots on the ground to stop them.
Trump’s mission to target both Iran’s missile program and Iran proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere would necessarily require troops on the ground, experts say.
“The entire premise of doing this entirely without any boots on the ground to achieve these objectives is just fantasy at this point,” according to Shah. “I think if they really intend to achieve those objectives as they say they do, it will require a longer-term commitment of U.S. boots on the ground, and that’s exactly what we want to avoid from happening.”
Iran, however, is likely welcoming a drawn-out military campaign that would exhaust the United States and its allies, according to Parsi with the Quincy Institute.
“They’re targeting Israel, but the real target now is the United States,” he said. “They have concluded that this war would only end once the pain tolerance of the United States has been reached. And what they’re not looking for is a premature ceasefire, one that ends the war but allows Israel and the United States to restock their munitions, regroup, remobilize, and then relaunch the war.”
Iran’s metric of success is not necessarily “winning” a war with the U.S. but trying to destroy Trump’s presidency before it can lose, according to Parsi.
“The administration is trying to change the expectations on the American side … but I fear that, unfortunately, this may go on for much, much longer than four weeks,” he said.
