President Donald Trump said Monday he is not ruling out the possibility of deploying U.S. ground forces into Iran if circumstances require it, signaling a willingness to escalate Operation Epic Fury beyond its current air and missile campaign.
“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump told The Post. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”
The comments came two days after the United States, in coordination with Israel, launched sweeping strikes targeting Iran’s military and political leadership. Among those killed, according to U.S. and Israeli officials, was Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled Iran since 1989.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed during a Pentagon press conference Monday that no American ground troops are currently operating inside Iran. However, he echoed the president’s posture of strategic ambiguity.
“President Trump ensures our enemies understand we’ll go as far as we need to go to advance American interests,” Hegseth said. “But we’re not dumb about it. You don’t have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years.”
Trump indicated the operation is progressing faster than anticipated. He told The Daily Mail over the weekend that he expected the conflict might last “four weeks or so,” but suggested Monday that the timeline could shrink.
“We’re right on schedule, way ahead of schedule in terms of leadership — 49 killed — and that was going to take, we figured, at least four weeks, and we did it in one day,” Trump said. “It’s going to go pretty quickly.”
The president said his final decision to strike followed negotiations in Geneva last Thursday, citing intelligence that Iran had resumed nuclear enrichment activities at a previously undisclosed site. He claimed earlier targeted facilities had been “obliterated,” prompting Iranian officials to shift operations elsewhere.
“We found them working on a totally different area, a totally different site, in order to make a nuclear weapon through enrichment — so it was just time,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Let’s go.’”
While Trump dismissed concerns about potential retaliatory terrorism — saying, “We’ll take it out” — the conflict has already resulted in American casualties. At least four U.S. service members were killed in an Iranian counterstrike targeting a U.S. operations center in Kuwait.
Public opinion appears divided. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend found 27% approval for the strikes, with 43% disapproving and 29% unsure. A CNN/SSRS poll showed 41% approval and 59% disapproval. Trump downplayed the numbers.
“I don’t care about polling. I have to do the right thing,” he said. “You cannot let Iran — run by crazy people — have a nuclear weapon.”
Framing the action as the culmination of decades of confrontation, Trump referenced the 1979 hostage crisis and the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. He also criticized the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, arguing that without intervention, Iran would already possess nuclear weapons.
