Report: Trump Privately Mulling Sending Ground Troops to Iran

President Trump has been talking privately about putting a limited number of US troops on the ground in Iran, multiple current and former US officials tell NBC News. According to those sources, Trump has floated deploying a small, targeted contingent rather than launching a large-scale ground invasion. The discussions, said to have been held with aides and Republican allies outside the White House, reportedly have centered on scenarios such as securing Iran's uranium stockpiles and helping to set up a post-war government friendly to US interests, including cooperation on oil production similar to the US-Venezuela relationship after Nicolas Maduro's capture.

NBC's sources say no decisions have been made and no orders issued. Publicly, Trump has kept the option open without endorsing it. "I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground," he told the New York Post earlier this week, saying he "probably" wouldn't need them but could use them "if they were necessary." The White House also said on Wednesday that ground troops in Iran are "not part of the plan ... at this time," per PBS. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NBC its report was based on "assumptions from anonymous sources" outside the president's national security team and insisted that Trump "always, wisely keeps all options open."

Leavitt added that anyone implying he favors one specific option has "no real seat at the table." Foreign policy analysts say any ground role would most likely involve special operations raids or, in the event of regime collapse, missions to help secure nuclear materials and shape a new government. Others note that the calculus could change if Iran appears to be winning a war of attrition. The conflict so far has been limited to airstrikes, but since it began last Saturday, six US service members have been killed and 18 wounded in Iranian counterattacks, per the Pentagon.

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, tells NBC that the country is ready to confront any US troops sent in: "We are waiting for them ... that would be a big disaster for them." Another Iranian official and ally to the late Ayatollah Ali Khameini adds, per Al Jazeera, that Iranian forces are "ready to disgrace those corrupt American officials by killing and capturing thousands." (Rumors of US ground troops heading to Iran had swirled earlier after an Army drill was canceled.)