00:00The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of American boots on the ground in Iran to finish dismantling
00:04the country's terror regime. The Washington Post is reporting that thousands of U.S. Marines will
00:08be sent to the Middle East to conduct raids, which includes special operations forces as
00:13well as conventional infantry troops. The latest report comes as two India-flagged tankers were
00:18allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz unharmed, which is still being controlled by
00:23Iran. The country's leaders had promised to allow, quote, non-hostile vessels safe passage,
00:27but President Trump has long said he wanted Hormuz open without any restrictions. And that's a big
00:33part of why the Pentagon may be planning for those boots on the ground inside of Iran. I asked the
00:38Post's deputy managing editor, Michael Zenni, about what we know so far. How many troops are we talking
00:43about here? And what exactly would the mission look like? We've just received word that the USS Tripoli,
00:50which is an amphibious assault ship with 1,500 Marines, has arrived in the Middle East. This is
00:57a force that is specifically designed to take beachheads. This is a very specific capability that
01:05this ship and these Marines have. The other thing that we're seeing is the mobilization of airborne
01:12troops with the 82nd Airborne Division who are being called up and sent to the Middle East.
01:18All of this indicates that this is likely not to be an invasion scale, because that requires a lot
01:28more logistics, tanks, heavy equipment, those sorts of things. And everything that we're seeing from
01:36the reporting is that if there is some sort of ground invasion, that this would be a matter of
01:42sort of weeks or a few months, not what we saw in Iraq or Afghanistan. At least that's not the
01:50intention.
01:51And as far as the target, it looks increasingly like Karg Island, which is this critical oil-producing
02:01island off of the coast of Iran, is the main target, with the intention to use that as basically a
02:08pain
02:09point to force the Iranians to come to some sort of deal. As far as the opposition, this is going
02:18to
02:18put US troops in much greater harm's way than they have been to date. Any time that you are on
02:27foreign
02:27soil engaging foreign troops is going to be different than what we've seen before, which is basically a
02:35massive air war where the US and Israel and Iran are lobbying bombs and drones and missiles at each
02:43other. And we have already, of course, seen casualties on the US side and on the Israeli side there.
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