Trump weighing several options for U.S. troops inside Iran

U.S. allies in the Gulf 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 eager for revenge, NBC News reported.

Trump is also increasingly facing 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. “It was my fault,” Robbins said of his vote.

The majority of voters – 54% – disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Iran war, according to an NBC News poll conducted earlier this month.

A top Trump ally also resigned from the administration this week to protest the war in Iran. Joe Kent, who was director of Trump’s 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 said.

The president, who has long promised to shield the United States from foreign military entanglements, has also been criticized for offering a range of justifications for starting war. Asked about one of them — that Iran is weeks away from being able to create a nuclear weapon — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declined to say in congressional testimony this week that Iran’s nuclear program posed an imminent threat.

Any ground operation in Iran could further entrench Trump in a war that he and his aides have defined as a narrowly defined, multi-goal mission: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile program, Iran’s navy, and Iran’s drone program.

And while sending troops to Iran carries risks, former U.S. officials have said a successful ground operation could put Trump in an optimal position to negotiate an end to the war.

Costa, who has served as the Pentagon’s top civilian adviser on operational war planning and overseas force posture, said the United States is in a situation where it may be forced to deploy American troops on the ground to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and ultimately end the war, given that Iran has shown it has “enormous economic leverage.”

“So we find ourselves in a problematic situation, where it might be necessary to deploy troops on the ground to guarantee access through Hormuz, which is much more dangerous for us,” Costa said. And he said Iran’s closure of the strait made it much more difficult for the United States to end the war on its own timetable.

U.S. Central Command has been developing plans for possible ground operations for the various options being considered for years, the two former U.S. officials said.

Those plans helped inform the options Trump considered, current and former officials said.

The deployment of troops to the Iranian coast would aim to alleviate the current threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which more than 20% of the world’s oil generally passes.

Before entering the strait, ships leaving the Persian Gulf must pass through several small islands known as Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Iran has established a military presence on the islands, which serve an important strategic objective for Tehran in controlling passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Even though U.S. strikes have destroyed more than 120 Iranian ships, according to the Pentagon, the Iranian Navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy maintain a so-called “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.

Officials said another possible use of U.S. ground forces would be to secure Iranian oil facilities on Kharg Island, located in the Persian Gulf about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Iran’s coast and home to 90 percent of the country’s oil production.

The United States bombed military targets on Kharg Island last Friday, and Trump threatened to strike oil facilities later. Taking control of oil facilities with several hundred troops would instead aim to collapse the Iranian regime’s economy by depriving it of its main source of income, with the United States using this leverage to negotiate an end to the conflict, according to current and former U.S. officials.

“Kharg Island is very much at stake,” one of the former U.S. officials said. “It always has been.”

The most perilous option for U.S. ground troops in Iran may also be the most definitive in terms of eliminating any potential Iranian nuclear threat, current and former U.S. officials said. That would include sending troops to Iran to find, recover and secure Iran’s highly enriched uranium, current and former U.S. officials said. Iranian uranium has long been the source of concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

There are potentially many places the United States would have to go to recover Iran’s entire uranium stockpile. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said earlier this month that about half of Iran’s 440-kilogram stockpile of highly enriched uranium was in Isfahan, but it is unclear whether the other half is at the Fordow or Natanz facilities, or whether it was damaged or destroyed during U.S. military strikes last June.