President Donald Trump has mused for decades about sending U.S. troops into Iranian territory. A key Republican senator close to the president is now publicly advocating for it. And lawmakers in both parties are sounding the alarm about the prospect.
The Trump administration’s deployment of 8,000 U.S. ground troops to the Middle East this week is inflaming tensions on Capitol Hill and spurring angst around the world — and is unlikely to force the Iranian regime to capitulate to U.S. demands, according to lawmakers, former U.S. military officials and experts on the region.
“I don’t think they’re any kind of a game-changer,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told MS NOW of the prospect of U.S. ground forces entering Iran. “I don’t think they represent a new and present danger to the Iranian government that would cause them to change their calculus.”
About 3,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division are preparing to deploy to the region, 2,500 Marines will arrive within days and a second group of 2,500 Marines will arrive within weeks. The 8,000 troops, though, are a small fraction of the 150,000 U.S. troops who invaded Iraq in 2003.
Their mission remains unclear, with the president declining to answer questions about their purpose and his aides saying the commander-in-chief is keeping all options on the table.
Democrats say the deployment is the latest example of Trump botching the execution of the war.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., an Iraq war veteran, said deploying a small number of U.S. ground troops will prolong the war, not end it. The U.S. deployed 150,000 troops in Iraq when it invaded the country but the fighting dragged on for years.
“Putting ground troops into Iran and widening this into a Forever War is not a way to solve this problem,” Moulton told MS NOW. “This whole war is really stupid. [Trump is] losing it and he doesn’t have a way to get out of it.”
Trump has suggested a more limited military objective could end the conflict: U.S. forces destroying or seizing control of the Island of Kharg, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports pass. As an apparent warning, earlier this month, Trump had U.S. forces attack military targets on Kharg but spared its refineries.
“We left just the one little area standing in, the standing part is where they have the pipes, all the oil pipes come in,” Trump told reporters on March 15. “I chose not to do it yet. We’ll see what happens. They want to negotiate. They want to negotiate badly.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a key backer of the war, said on X that seizing Kharg would end the war. “If Iran loses control or the ability to operate its oil infrastructure from Kharg Island, its economy is annihilated,” he wrote. “He who controls Kharg Island, controls the destiny of this war.”
Graham in recent days doubled down on seizing Kharg. “I trust the Marines,” Graham said on Fox News. “We did Iowa Jima, we can do this. The Marines — my money is always on the Marines.”
He added, “The day we control that island, this regime, this terrorist regime, has been weakened and will die on the vine.”
The comments drew swift pushback even from members of his own party. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., called the remarks “unacceptable and dark.” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., called out Graham in a series of posts about sending in ground troops and deploying “someone else’s kids to war.”
Trump himself has talked about seizing Kharg Island for decades. “I’d do a number on Kharg Island,” he told the Guardian in 1988. “I’d go in and take it” to counter Iranian military action.
A former senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MS NOW that “it’s a disaster waiting to happen if that’s their mission” to seize Kharg Island.
Vali Nasr, a leading expert on Iran and professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that if Karg is attacked, the Iranian regime would respond with escalation, not capitulation.
“Taking Kharg means destroying it and Iran will respond with major escalation,” Nasr told MS NOW. “Taking Iranian land and destroying its oil export depot will mean [the] beginning of a war of resistance in Iran.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that 8,000 troops are also not enough to permanently reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a second potential target for U.S. ground forces. Iran’s closure of the narrow waterway has sent global oil prices soaring.
Blumenthal said U.S. forces could seize control of the waterway but would then come under attack over time.
“I strongly doubt 8,000 troops would be enough to take, hold and secure the territory necessary to truly secure the Strait of Hormuz,” he told MS NOW. “They’d be extremely vulnerable to drone and terrorist attacks, the longer they stay.”
Nicole Grajewski, an expert on Iran’s nuclear program and armed forces at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Trump administration is underestimating how difficult it would be to seize and maintain control of Kharg or the Strait of Hormuz.
“I think that is a far more difficult military mission than the administration understands,” she said. “It’s such a small and compressed area.”
Grajewski added that a U.S. seizure of Kharg will not force Iran to surrender as Graham predicts. “I don’t see them accepting regime change,” she said.
Adam Hudacek contributed to this report.
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