By: AFP

President Donald Trump on Monday said he is not ruling out sending US troops into Iran, while threatening a new, “big wave” of attacks.

The 79-year-old Republican has long campaigned against decades of US military entanglements in the Middle East, but ordered a large-scale war against Iran starting Saturday.

While so far the assault has focused entirely on aerial attacks by missiles and bombs, Trump refused to rule out sending ground troops, something far riskier in terms of possible casualties.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground,” Trump said, using a golf term for anxiety. “Every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”

“I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ (or) ‘if they were necessary,'” he told the New York Post in one of numerous brief interviews he has given since launching the Iran operation.

Trump says US ‘substantially ahead’ of timeline in Iran

President Donald Trump said that the US attack on Iran is meeting its goals ahead of schedule but also warned the war could go “far longer” than his initial estimates of about a month.

“We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections,” Trump said at the White House, adding: “From the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it.”

Trump says he ordered Iran strikes to thwart Tehran’s missile programme

By: Reuters

US President Donald Trump said he ordered the US military to attack Iran to thwart Tehran’s nuclear programme and a ballistic missile program that he said was growing rapidly.