President Trump: US ‘will not send troops anywhere’ to Iran
President Trump denied that the US was sending troops to Iran, even though a US Navy warship carrying 2,000 Marines was seen entering the region.
According to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll released on March 19, 65% of Americans think President Donald Trump will “order a large-scale ground war” in Iran, with just 7% supporting him.
The poll, conducted from March 17 to March 19, found that 55% of respondents opposed the deployment of ground troops and 34% supported deploying a small number of special forces to Iran. 59% of respondents did not support the war.
President Trump has insisted that the United States is not sending troops to the Middle East, even though a US Navy warship carrying more than 2,000 Marines has been seen entering the region. Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that the Trump administration is considering sending in thousands of U.S. troops as part of the next phase of the operation against Iran.
Asked by reporters in the Oval Office on March 19 if he intended to keep more U.S. troops in the region, the president said “no.”
President Trump explained, “We have no intention of sending troops anywhere.” “If I had, I would never say so. But I’m not going to send in the troops.”
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in a March 19 press conference that there would be a “ground element” to this war, adding: “This ground element has many possibilities, and I feel free not to share all of those possibilities with you.”
On March 15, satellite images showed the American-class amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA7) and two destroyers sailing southwest in the South China Sea.
Despite MAGA backlash, Republicans show support for war in polls
So far, 77% of Republicans support war, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. 14% of Republican respondents supported a large-scale invasion, and 63% supported limited use of special forces.
President Trump faces backlash from MAGA officials who stood by his campaign promise of no “forever wars” and from senior government officials who resigned in protest of the war.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Trump ally and former congresswoman, said in a social media post on March 1 that starting a war was “not what we were campaigning for,” and has continued to criticize it ever since.
“The Iran war is quickly spiraling out of control. This should never have happened,” she said in a March 19 social media post.
Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in his resignation letter on March 17 that he could not support the war “in good conscience” and claimed that the Trump administration “started this war under pressure from Israel.”
In an interview with Tucker Carlson on March 18, Kent reiterated the statement in his resignation letter that there was “no intelligence” that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States before the war began.
“There was no intelligence community that said, ‘Hey, whatever day March 1st is, the Iranians are going to launch this big raid, they’re going to do 9/11 or Pearl Harbor or something. They’re going to attack one of our bases,'” he said.
Netanyahu rejected accusations that Israel had drawn the United States into the war, asking: “Does anyone really think they can tell President Trump what to do?”
Opinion poll shows President Trump’s approval rating is 40%
President Trump’s broad standing among the public is little changed in the poll, rising one point to 40% from the poll taken hours after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
The results are in line with polls compiled by The New York Times and Real Clear Politics, which give Trump an approval rating of 40% and 42.3%, respectively.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,545 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
Contributed by: Reuters
