The Pentagon is sending ground forces to Iran. Trump administration officials gave a story to the Washington Post that is being repeated everywhere:
The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of boots on the ground operations in Iran, a major escalation in President Trump’s goal to dismantle the remaining faction of the murderous Iranian regime, according to a report.
Thousands of US Marines would be sent to the Middle East to conduct raids that include Special Operations forces and conventional infantry troops, the Washington Post reported, citing sources.
Officials have been discussing plans for sending troops into Iran for weeks.
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Roughly 10,000 American troops were being considered for deployment to the Middle East last week, to boost the already significant military presence in the Gulf region, giving Trump additional military options.The potential reinforcement would add to the nearly 5,000 Marines and sailors and roughly 2,000 members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division already deployed.
When the bombardment of Iran began, most observers thought that there was a bright line–no troops on the ground. I don’t know whether Secretary Hegseth and the generals were surprised by the vast quantity of munitions that Iran commanded, or the resilience of the regime even after several generations of leaders had been eliminated, but I was. I have to think that the current threatened escalation is a response to tougher than expected resistance from the mullahs’ regime.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says that the Pentagon is presenting President Trump with options, and he has not decided whether to commit ground troops. I believe that is true. But deployment has a logic of its own, and if Trump is just bluffing and ultimately decides not to invade–either to seize Kargh Island or to take some other objectives–it will be, and will appear to be, a climbdown.
I don’t doubt that the modest number of troops we are assembling can achieve certain objectives, but if Iran’s military fights, and we have every reason to expect that it will, any gains will be limited and there will be losses. Bringing our involvement in Iran to a conclusion at that point will be, at best, a messy and unsatisfactory operation.
The problem is compounded by the fact that the Democrats and their press minions are rooting for the mullahs. They fervently hope that our efforts in Iran will end in catastrophe, and anything short of a grand victory will be portrayed in the press as a disaster. If ground troops are committed on even a limited basis, I think the midterm elections are over. The House is already lost, and the Senate could follow.
My own feelings are mixed. The real takeaway from what we have seen so far is that we waited far too long to confront the Iranian regime. They have fanatically and assiduously been assembling military force far beyond what most of us understood. If we had waited another five or ten years, it likely would have been too late to take on the single biggest threat to our security. The mullahs would have been too strong.
Then, too, we have the question of regime change. President Trump and his representatives have always been careful to articulate our goals in terms of degrading Iran’s military capabilities, not overthrowing the theocracy, although that is of course a desired end. I, for one, actually care about the 90 million Iranians who are forced to live under one of the most diabolical tyrannies of the modern era. I would be willing to expend considerable force and take substantial losses to consign the mullahs to history’s garbage dump. But that is a minority view, and the forces that are now being sent to the Gulf are, I think, far short of what it would take to achieve that goal.
On balance, I think the best thing the administration can do is continue to bomb Iran’s military infrastructure, as well as other targets, for a few weeks more. (I do not understand, for one thing, why the regime’s “state media” continue to broadcast.) After some further degradation, say in two or three weeks, the administration can declare victory and end the campaign. That is not a wholly satisfactory conclusion, especially for the Iranian people. But it will be a number of years before the mullahs will be able to rebuild their military power, and then maybe we will have to do it again. In the meantime, you never know what might happen.
On that basis, our devastation of the regime’s military infrastructure will have been both successful and long overdue. The administration will be able to turn its attention to domestic matters; the price of gas will come back down and the stock market will rebound. The conservative movement will live to fight again another day.
As I have said before with regard to Iran, I fervently hope that I am wrong. But I think that committing ground troops, even in the modest numbers implied by the current mobilization, would be a serious mistake.
