Trump not ruling out ‘boots on the ground’ in Iran, but ‘probably don’t need them’

The president also dismissed concerns that Iran could respond to the strikes through terrorist attacks targeting the United States.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

President Trump said Monday he is not ruling out the deployment of US ground forces to Iran if circumstances require it, as he described the ongoing American military campaign as progressing faster than anticipated following strikes aimed at Iran’s senior leadership.

In an interview with The New York Post, Trump said the use of US troops on the ground remains a possibility, though he stressed it may not be necessary.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

The comments came after the United States launched strikes on Saturday as part of Operation Epic Fury, which Trump said was designed to decapitate Iran’s military and political leadership. He told the Post that the operation was “way ahead of schedule,” citing the killing of dozens of senior officials in Tehran.

Speaking separately at a Pentagon press conference Monday morning, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said no American troops are currently operating inside Iran while also declining to exclude future deployments.

“President Trump ensures our enemies understand we’ll go as far as we need to go to advance American interests. But we’re not dumb about it,” Hegseth told reporters. “You don’t have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years.”

Trump offered differing estimates of the war’s duration over the past two days. In comments to the Daily Mail on Sunday, he said he believed the conflict would last “four weeks or so.” By Monday, he suggested the timeline could be shorter, telling the Post, “It’s going to go pretty quickly.”

Trump said the pace of leadership losses had exceeded expectations. “We’re right on schedule, way ahead of schedule in terms of leadership — 49 killed — and that was, you know, going to take, we figured, at least four weeks, and we did it in one day,” he said.

The president also dismissed concerns that Iran could respond to the strikes through terrorist attacks targeting the United States.

“We’ll take it out. Whatever. It’s like everything else, we’ll take it out,” Trump said.