President Trump declined to rule out sending U.S. ground troops into Iran if necessary, he said in an interview published Monday.
“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,” Mr. Trump told the New York Post. “I say ’probably don’t need them,’ [or] ’if they were necessary.”
The president also said he expects the war to move ahead of schedule.
“It’s going to go pretty quickly,” he said. “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 one day.”
Mr. Trump’s latest comments on the Iran military operation, which has been dubbed Operation Epic Fury, come two days after he launched his first strikes on Iran. The attacks killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior officials.
Iran has responded with several retaliatory strikes on the country by striking U.S. military bases in the Middle East, killing three service members. A fourth U.S. service member died Monday after suffering injuries during Iran’s attack.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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