WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is weighing whether to send possibly thousands of U.S. troops into Iran as he looks for a way to achieve some of his key goals and end the war, according to the two current U.S. officials, two former U.S. officials and another person familiar with the discussions.
Any deployment of ground troops into Iran would carry increased risk but also a potential strategic value of hastening an end to the war. Trump’s considerations come as he faces a looming global energy crisis, increasing political backlash at home from some of his own supporters, and emerging disagreements between the U.S. and its Middle East allies over the direction of the war.
There are several options under discussion, the sources said. One would be aimed at freeing up passage in the Strait of Hormuz by deploying troops to Iranian ports or small islands in the Persian Gulf to mitigate the threat to vessels, the sources said. Others include an operation to retrieve Iran’s highly enriched uranium or using troops to seize Iranian oil facilities to cut off a key financial lifeline and attempt to extract concessions from the regime, the sources said.
They said none of the options that are being seriously considered are expected to involve large-scale deployments like those in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. NBC News previously reported that Trump has privately expressed serious interest in deploying U.S. troops on the ground inside of Iran.
Since the war began, Trump has publicly said he is open to sending U.S. troops into Iran. But when asked about it Thursday, Trump told reporters, “No, I’m not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you, but I’m not putting troops.”
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement on Friday, “As President Trump said, he has no plans to send troops anywhere — but he wisely does not broadcast his military strategy to the media.” The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
The scale and duration of any deployment of U.S. troops inside of Iran would depend on the type of operation, but it could range from hundreds of specialized forces operating on the ground for a number of hours, similar to the operation employed by forces in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, to thousands over a matter of weeks, according to the two current U.S. officials and the two former U.S. officials.
“There’s varying degrees of difficulty for each of these operations although all of them are going to be high risk and dangerous. All of them run the risk of casualties of U.S. soldiers,” said Joe Costa, the director of the Forward Defense program of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He said putting boots on the ground is more perilous than an air campaign. “It comes with a much higher risk to our soldiers,” he said.
Reuters reported some of the targets for U.S. ground troops in Iran that the president is considering.
Currently the U.S. has about 50,000 troops deployed in the Middle East. The U.S. has so far conducted the war in Iran from the air and sea. An additional several thousand Marines are expected to arrive in the region in coming days, NBC News has reported. The U.S. also is accelerating the deployment of thousands more Marines and sailors to the Middle East, according to two people familiar with the decision.
One of the U.S. officials said the U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran over the past three weeks has created conditions on the ground in Iran that make a deployment of troops there “lower risk” than it would have been earlier in the war. Still, the official said, sending ground troops into Iran would increase the threat to American forces in the region.
Thirteen U.S. service members have died since the war began on Feb. 28.
Officials from the U.S., Israel and other American allies recently gathered for a joint briefing on the war and reviewed intelligence that showed an Iranian-backed militia would likely target U.S. bases if Trump deployed ground troops, according to two people familiar with the briefing.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries have been conducting operations to “degrade and destroy” Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capabilities, hitting thousands of targets and assassinating Iran’s supreme leader and other top regime officials.
But divisions have emerged between the U.S. and Israel over strategy in the war.
On Wednesday, Israel attacked an Iranian gas field that is the world’s largest. Iran retaliated by hitting energy targets in the region, including a field in Qatar — infuriating the Qataris. Afterward, Trump posted on social media that Israel would no longer strike Iran’s energy sites as long as Iran also stood down, and said the U.S. “knew nothing about” Israel’s attack in advance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that "Israel acted alone.”
A U.S. official told NBC News that Israel did inform the U.S. in advance of its plans to strike the oil facility. Trump said Thursday that he spoke with Netanyahu about Israel’s attacks on Iran’s oil infrastructure. “I told him, ‘Don’t do that.’ And he won’t do that,” Trump said. “It’s coordinated, but on occasion, he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it, and so we’re not doing that anymore.” Prior to Wednesday, U.S. officials had privately expressed concern internally over Israel striking Iranian oil targets, according to people familiar with the discussions. The Trump administration views Iran’s oil facilities as key to Iran’s future if a regime the U.S. could work with eventually takes control of the government.
America’s Gulf state allies want to see an end to the war, with some of them concerned about the U.S. leaving Iran’s hard-line regime in power and vengeful, NBC News has reported.
Trump also is increasingly navigating criticism from some of his own supporters over his decision to go to war in Iran. Amanda Robbins told NBC News this week that she regrets voting for Trump three times in her home state of Pennsylvania because of rising gas prices due to the war in Iran. “That was my bad,” Robbins said of her vote.
The majority of voters — 54% — disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war in Iran, according to a NBC News poll earlier this month.
A top Trump ally also resigned from the administration this week in protest of the war in Iran. Joe Kent, who served as Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation Wednesday, saying he disagreed with Trump’s decision to launch a war in Iran because the regime did not pose “an imminent threat,” as the Trump administration has said.
The president, who long promised to extract the U.S. from foreign military entanglements, has also received criticism for offering an array of rationales for starting the war. Asked about one of them — that Iran was weeks away from being able to create a nuclear weapon — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declined to say during congressional testimony this week that Iran’s nuclear program presented an imminent threat.
Any ground operation in Iran could further entrench Trump in a war he and his aides have cast as a narrowly defined mission that is focused on several objectives: to destroy the Iranian ballistic missile program, the Iranian Navy and the Iranian drone program.
And while sending troops into Iran carries risk, the former U.S. officials said a successful ground operation could put Trump in an optimal position to negotiate an end to the war.
Costa, who served as the Pentagon’s principal civilian adviser for operational war planning and overseas force posture, said the U.S. is in a corner where it may be forced to put U.S. troops on the ground to reopen to Strait of Hormuz and ultimately to end the war, given Iran has shown it has “enormous economic leverage.”
“So we are in a problematic spot, where putting troops on the ground might be necessary to ensure access through Hormuz, which is far more dangerous for us,” Costa said. And he said Iran closing the strait has made it far more difficult for the U.S. to end the war on its own timeline.
U.S. Central Command has for years had plans developed for potential ground operations for the various options under consideration, the two former U.S. officials said.
Those plans have helped inform the options that Trump has been considering, the current and former officials said.
Deploying troops on Iran’s coastlines would be aimed at mitigating the current threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which more than 20% of the world’s oil typically flows.
Before entering the strait, ships leaving the Persian Gulf have to pass several small islands known as Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Iran has established a military presence on the islands, which have a significant strategic purpose for Tehran in controlling passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
Even with U.S. strikes taking out more than 120 of Iran’s ships, according to the Pentagon, the Iranian Navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy maintain what’s known as a “mosquito fleet,” more than 1,000 fast boats, some unmanned and packed with explosives, that pose a threat to shipping, the officials said. These boats can quickly surround a ship from all sides.
The officials said another possible use of U.S. ground forces would be securing Iran’s oil facilities on Kharg Island, which sits in the Persian Gulf about 15 miles off the Iranian coast, and is home to 90% of the country’s oil production.
The U.S. bombed military targets on Kharg Island last Friday, with Trump threatening to later hit the oil facilities there. Seizing control of the oil facilities with several hundred troops instead would be designed to collapse the Iranian regime’s economy by depriving it of its primary source of revenue, with the U.S. using that leverage to negotiate an end to the conflict, according to the current and former U.S. officials.
“Kharg Island is very much in play,” one of the former U.S. officials said. “It always has been.”
The most perilous option for U.S. ground troops in Iran also could be the most definitive in terms of eliminating any potential Iranian nuclear threat, the current and former U.S. officials said. It would include sending troops into Iran to find, retrieve and secure Iran’s highly enriched uranium, the current and former U.S. officials said. Iran’s uranium has long been the driver of concern about Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
There are potentially multiple locations where the U.S. would have to go to fully retrieve Iran’s stockpile of uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi said earlier this month that roughly half of Iran’s 440-kilogram highly enriched uranium stockpile was at Isfahan, but it’s not clear whether the other half is at facilities in Fordow or Natanz, or if it was damaged or destroyed during U.S. military strikes last June.
