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.
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