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Operation Epic Fury has entered its fifth week, and Americans are understandably eager to know how the war against Iran is progressing and whether the conflict will end soon.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been a standout cabinet member in the Trump administration, and last week, he illustrated with definitive clarity what the objectives of this military campaign are, and whether these goals must be achieved by utilizing U.S. boots on the ground – a broadly unpopular option among most Americans.
“This is not gonna be a prolonged conflict,” Rubio told reporters. “The objectives I’ve outlined to you…we’re going to destroy their factories that make missiles and rockets and drones, we’re going to destroy their navy, we’re going to destroy their air force, and we are going to significantly destroy their missile launchers, so they can never hide behind these things to get a nuclear weapon.”
As reported by RSBN, there are currently 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. A reported 10,000 U.S. servicemembers have been recently deployed to the region amid the conflict with Iran. Many media voices have openly speculated about the use of ground troops to achieve America’s objectives in the war, but Secretary Rubio offered a different perspective.
“We are achieving all those objectives, we are ahead of schedule on most of them, and we can achieve them without any ground troops – without any,” he said. “Now, in terms of why there’s deployments. Number one, the president has to be prepared for multiple contingencies, which I’m not going to discuss with the media…but we can achieve all of our objectives without ground troops, but we’re always going to be prepared to give the president maximum optionality, and maximum opportunity to adjust to contingencies, should they emerge.”
On Sunday, while gaggling with the press aboard Air Force One, President Trump expressed optimism for a possible peace deal with Iran, indicating that he would like to see an end to the conflict as soon as possible.
“I do see a deal in Iran, yeah, it could be soon,” he said, when asked if there could even be a deal on the table as early as this week.
And, on the issue of ground troops, the president’s message was in lockstep with Secretary Rubio’s.
“I just have lots of alternatives,” President Trump said.
