US Troop Movements Fan Fears Of A Risky Ground Attack On Iran

Even as Donald Trump pushes for talks to end the war against Iran, the US has ordered thousands of troops to the region, fueling fears that the 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.

"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."

Photo Credit: Bloomberg

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.

Among the concerns: any US troops who deploy will be poorly equipped to defend themselves against a drone-saturated battlescape fundamentally different from past conflicts. Iran has vowed massive retaliation and to lay naval mines across the Persian Gulf. Casualties could far surpass the 13 American servicemembers killed so far.

"Let me repeat: I will not support troops on the ground in Iran," Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, said on social media.

"Washington's war machine is hard at work," she wrote, adding the administration is trying to "drag us into Iran to make it another Iraq. We can't let them."

While Trump hasn't announced his plans, people familiar with the matter said in recent days the Pentagon ordered the deployment of two Marine Expeditionary Units - made up with about 5,000 troops along with aircraft and amphibious landing vehicles - to the region. On Tuesday, a person familiar with the matter said Trump was also sending more than 1,000 soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East.

Representative Mike Rogers, an Alabama Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday a closed-door briefing on Iran didn't answer questions from lawmakers about the troops being deployed.

"We want to know more about what's going on, what the options are and why they're being considered," he told reporters. "And we're just not getting enough answers on those questions."

Those deployments add to the massive number of aircraft, soldiers and munitions that the US sent to the region before launching its campaign against Iran on Feb. 28. As the buildup continued, US officials kept up negotiations with Iran and presented the attack as a last resort after the talks failed.

They also bear echoes of the Afghanistan conflict, when the US started with a limited deployment of about 3,000 troops in the wake of 9/11. US troop levels quickly rose and topped out at more than 100,000 at the height of the surge under President Barack Obama.

Trump's allies voiced caution about the deployments and have so far declined to call them a prelude to a bigger ground attack.

"The buildup of troops is very different than boots on the ground," House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. "We don't have boots on the ground. I don't think that's the intention, but I think Iran should watch that buildup, and they need to take note of that."

This time around, Trump has said repeatedly the US is looking for a resolution to the conflict and is now talking to the Iranians. After giving Iran 48 hours' warning to open the strait - a deadline that would have expired on Monday evening - Trump extended the window for another five days.

"The United States has been engaged over the last three days in productive conversations," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday. "You're beginning to see the regime look for an exit ramp."

If the US opts to seize Kharg Island, the Marines would likely lead the attack. They can both seize the territory and dig in, according to a former US official who asked not to be identified discussing private plans. By contrast, soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division would arrive via parachute and as a light-infantry unit would have less protective capabilities.

Seizing Kharg, which typically handles 90 per cent of Iran's crude exports, would choke off Tehran's primary source of revenue, although the country has other smaller crude terminals.

The moment US troops touched down on the island, a third the size of Manhattan, would be a highly charged symbolic event. And given the existential threat the US posed to Iran - including threats of regime change - it risks loosening the country's restraint and prompting escalation that would spike US troop casualties, further roil energy markets and pull US allies and adversaries into the conflict even more.

"If you go from a campaign where you're focused on military strikes, where our comparative advantages are at the maximum, and you turn it into a ground war, then our relative comparative advantages decline - and you're going to have more casualties," said Bradley Bowman, a former US Army officer who has advised US lawmakers and is now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

In a letter on Tuesday, Iran's Defence Council said any encroachment on Iranian land would lead to the mining of the Persian Gulf, not just the Strait.

While Europe continues to push for a swift end to the conflict, Gulf states are increasingly hardening their stances against Tehran, following weeks in which they've borne the brunt of a war they didn't choose but are now considering joining, according to people familiar with the matter.

In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, said a "simple cease-fire isn't enough" and called for "a conclusive outcome that addresses the full range of Iranian threats."

"Building a fence around the problem and wishing it goes away isn't the answer," Otaiba wrote. "It would simply defer the next crisis."

Two French officials, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations, said deploying troops to Iran would have catastrophic consequences that would lead to even greater escalation.

While Trump continues to insist the US has the upper hand, several of Trump's former staff have broken with the president over the war. They include his former defense secretary, James Mattis, who resigned to protest Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

"There have been significant military successes but they are not matched by strategic outcomes," Mattis told the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference. "Now some of the strategic outcomes early on - unconditional surrender, regime change, we're going to dictate who the next supreme leader is - those were clearly nonsense, those were delusional."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)