Even as Donald Trump pushes for talks to end the war against Iran, the US has ordered thousands of troops to the region, fuelling fears that the American president is gearing up for exactly the sort of risky ground invasion that he once campaigned against.
Iran has publicly rejected Trump’s diplomatic outreach and threatened massive retaliation if the US does put boots on the ground in a bid to break Tehran’s will. For a president who faulted his predecessors’ so-called forever wars, the potential escalation scenarios bear the prospect of major casualties.
Current and former military officials and analysts envision three possibilities for US troops, none of them easy: occupy the Iranian oil nexus of Kharg Island, help in an operation to capture Iran’s nuclear material, or deploy along Iran’s coast to break the regime’s chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz.
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“All feel less than 50-50 to me at the moment but that could change,” said Michael O’Hanlon, who specialises in defence strategy at the Brookings Institution think tank. “Each is very risky.”
Some Trump allies including his former Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham have touted troop deployments on Iranian soil as a necessary way of forcing Tehran to capitulate. Yet the regime has warned of even greater retaliation if the US goes ahead with that plan, and opposition has grown among Republicans, as well as Democrats, about the dangers involved.
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