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Sources: Trump Is Dangerously Close to Sending Troops to Iran
Advisers are urging the president ‘to go bigger to end this once and for all.’
READ IN APP Trump at the White House on March 5, 2026. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Donald Trump is much closer to sending US troops to invade Iran than people realize.
In recent days, US officials and other close allies have privately briefed Trump that if he wants to achieve what he says he wants to achieve in his illegal war – including “unconditional surrender” by the Iranian government – then he is going to have to deploy ground troops to Iran, four knowledgeable sources in or close to the Trump-Vance administration tell Zeteo.
Trump, the sources say, has been receptive to these ideas, and he and others around him have been leaning toward sending in the troops. While no final decision has been made yet, internal momentum at top levels of the government is rapidly headed in that direction.
According to the sources, administration officials and allies have told Trump that attacks from the air are not enough to accomplish Trump’s stated ideas of victory – though, to be fair, the president and his team are constantly changing how they would define a “victory” in their Iran war, which began with no clear mission and no coherent strategy beyond removing Iran’s top leaders and bombing the country, in partnership with Israel.
In multiple conversations over the past few days, several of these officials and outside advisers have told the president that a more limited, smaller deployment of special forces will almost certainly not be enough, and that he’d need to send further ground troops to get what he wants.
“He likes the idea of special forces,” a Trump administration official tells Zeteo. “But they’re telling him he has to go bigger to end this once and for all.”
Some Republicans close to Trump have assured him – however flimsily – that this kind of troop deployment could be achieved without creating the type of Iraq War 2.0-style quagmire in the Middle East that the president and his top officials have long publicly railed against.
None of the sources said anything about the Trump White House seeking congressional authorization before sending in the troops.
If Trump were to put boots on the ground, it is unclear how large a troop deployment he’d ultimately go for.
On Friday, NBC News reported that “Trump has discussed the idea of deploying ground troops with aides and Republican officials outside the White House while outlining his vision for a post-war Iran in which Iran’s uranium is secure and the US and a new Iranian regime cooperate on oil production similar to how the US and Venezuela are.”
In an interview with the New York Post earlier this week, the president refused to rule out deploying ground troops inside Iran, stating: “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’s war is only a week old. It has already gotten multiple US service members killed, has ended the lives of over 1,000 Iranians, and has sent oil prices soaring – threatening to torpedo the global economy.
Smoke is seen over Tehran after US-Israeli airstrikes on March 6, 2026. Photo by Contributor/Getty Images
The president is now considering expanding his war, even though, according to the Washington Post, a “classified report by the National Intelligence Council, representing the collective wisdom of America’s 18 intelligence agencies, found that even a large-scale assault on Iran would be unlikely to oust its entrenched military and clerical establishment.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Zeteo’s request for comment. The Pentagon said, “Due to operations security we do not discuss future or hypothetical movements.”
One voice close to the president who’s advocating for further escalation is Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a longtime hawk. According to the Wall Street Journal, Graham has traveled to Israel several times in recent weeks, meeting with members of Israeli intelligence.
“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the paper, which reports that the South Carolina senator coached Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to lobby Trump to attack Iran. Graham said that Netanyahu succeeded in showing Trump intelligence that persuaded him to go ahead and act.
On Wednesday, as Graham addressed reporters, he cited his communications with Netanyahu.
“I’ve talked to Bibi this morning. They’re all in. This regime is going to collapse. It’s not if, it’s when,” he said. “This regime needs to collapse. It should have collapsed a long time ago,” he added.”
The rush to escalation has happened even as the administration has already carried out multiple atrocities, with little scruple.
The US, by its own military investigators’ estimation, was likely responsible for the attack that killed at least 150 children and staff at a girls’ school on the first day of Trump’s war on Iran. The attack is one of the deadliest single instances of civilian casualties in decades in the Middle East.
Shortly afterwards, the US torpedoed a reportedly unarmed Iranian naval ship in international waters. The ship was traveling back from a naval exercise that India had invited it to. Sri Lankan authorities swooped in to carry out a rescue mission for survivors – something the US did not do.
Despite the shocking details of both attacks, members of Congress have been jarringly dismissive of the attacks at worst, or alarmingly unaware of the details. Republicans have been quick to prescribe blame, for instance, on the girls’ school, on an errant Iranian missile. When pressed for evidence on such a claim, Republican Rep. Randy Fine responded: ““what’s the evidence they didn’t?”
The ignorance, or outward dismissal of the stakes, was not restricted to the right side of the aisle. When asked about the US attack on the Iranian ship, Democratic Senator John Fetterman completely ignored the question, instead, in Trumpian fashion, attacked Zeteo:
The attacks have continued – on schools, hospitals, and more. After a reported US attack on a water desalination plant, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said: “Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences. The US set this precedent, not Iran.”
As the Trump-Vance administration escalates its illegal war, it seems unperturbed by escalating retaliation by Iran – or even the potential for terrorist attacks on US soil. Instead, the administration is reportedly blocking intelligence agencies from warning law enforcement agencies nationwide about increased domestic threats due to the war in Iran.
Rather than end this dangerous and illegal war, Trump could soon expand it further.