Hardly any Americans would support Donald Trump sending U.S. troops to Iran to assist in his already unpopular war, according to a brutal new poll.
Just 7 percent of respondents in a Reuters survey of 1,545 U.S. adults said they would back the president carrying out a “boots on the ground” large-scale invasion of the Middle Eastern country.
Only 34 percent said they would support sending special forces into Iran, while a majority (55 percent) said they oppose the U.S. deploying any ground troops at all. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) believe Trump will eventually order troops into a large-scale ground war in Iran
Overall, Trump’s multibillion-dollar Iran war is approved by just 37 percent of U.S. adults, while 59 percent disapprove, including about one in five Republicans.
Trump has said he does not want to put boots on the ground, but has also coyly suggested that could change.
“I’m not putting troops anywhere,” Trump told a reporter in the Oval Office on Thursday. “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”
Two days earlier, the president also said he was “not afraid” to put boots on the ground in Iran during an Oval Office meeting with Ireland’s prime minister, Micheál Martin.
“I’m really not afraid of that,” Trump said. “I’m really not afraid of anything.”
The comments come as the Pentagon is requesting that Congress approve an additional $200 billion to fund the Iran war, despite Trump’s insistence that the conflict will end soon.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that the Trump administration is weighing the possibility of deploying air and naval forces to help oil tankers secure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the closed-off shipping route through which around one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
There have also been discussions that the only way to secure the Strait and end the oil crisis triggered by Trump’s war would be to send U.S. troops to Iran’s shoreline.
Another potential option is sending troops to secure Kharg Island, Iran’s economic lifeline that handles nearly all of the country’s crude exports, which the U.S. attacked last week. Sources told Reuters such a move would be extremely risky, because Iran could fire missiles and drones on the island that houses its main oil export terminal.
“There has been no decision to send ground troops at this time, but President Trump wisely keeps all options at his disposal,” a White House official told the Daily Beast.
“The President is focused on achieving all of the defined objectives of Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capacity, annihilate their navy, ensure their terrorist proxies cannot destabilize the region, and guarantee that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.”
Any plan to send U.S. troops into the Middle East would represent a major escalation in the conflict that Trump has repeatedly insisted will soon be over.
Democratic Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego said the Pentagon’s eye-watering war supplemental request suggests the Trump administration has no real plan for how to resolve the conflict.
“At the height of combat the Iraq War cost around $140 billion per year. If the Pentagon is asking for $200 billion they are asking for a long war,” Gallego posted on X.
