00:11U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran continue over a month after the joint campaign first began.
00:18Washington now considering a ground offensive with thousands of American army personnel arriving in the region over the weekend.
00:24U.S. President Donald Trump, though, also insisting a deal with Iran could soon be on the horizon.
00:30Delano D'Souza has more.
00:34Incoming missiles spotted over Tehran as the U.S. and Israel's campaign against the Islamic Republic continues.
00:41The Iranian capital targeted once again as rescue workers tended to the injured in the early hours of Monday morning.
00:48As Israel claims it struck missile production sites in Iran's capital, the U.S. President says regime change in Iran
00:55has been achieved.
00:57We've had regime change, if you look, already because the one regime was decimated, destroyed, they're all dead.
01:05The next regime is mostly dead.
01:08And the third regime, we're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before.
01:12It's a whole different group of people.
01:14So I would consider that regime change.
01:17And frankly, they've been very reasonable.
01:20Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One the U.S. is weeks ahead of schedule in Iran.
01:25The statement comes as Washington mulls a possible ground operation to seize Iran's nuclear stockpile.
01:32The mission would be among the riskiest in U.S. history.
01:35Trump is also contemplating a takeover of Karg Island, through which most of Iran's oil is exported.
01:41He told the Financial Times it's one of the options on the table, adding it would mean the U.S.
01:46would be there for a while.
01:48The U.S. president threatening to escalate tensions in the Middle East as diplomatic efforts to end the conflict move
01:54ahead.
01:55Pakistan says talks to end the war would be held in Islamabad in the coming days.
02:00For now, Iran continues its retaliation, striking targets in Israel and the wider Middle East.
02:07The Islamic Republic has warned that any U.S. takeover of its islands would result in the closure of shipping
02:12routes throughout the Gulf.
02:14A sign the U.S. president's efforts to remove Tehran's chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz may backfire and send
02:20oil prices skyrocketing even further.
02:24As you just heard there, the New York Times is reporting hundreds of U.S. commandos have arrived in the
02:29Middle East,
02:30joining thousands of Marines and Army paratroopers for a mission that still remains largely undefined.
02:36We're going to talk more about that now with Douglas Herbert, who joins me on the set.
02:39So, Doug, the first question is, why would the U.S. be sending special operations commandos into the regions if
02:45Trump says his goal is to wind this war down?
02:47Well, the most honest answer is we do not know.
02:50We do not know what their mission is, and likely many of them do not know, yet it has not
02:54been specified.
02:56But you're absolutely right.
02:57You know, we've been banding about the number that right now there's upwards of 50,000 American troops throughout the
03:03region.
03:04They're on ships at sea.
03:06They're at bases on the ground.
03:07They're dispersed.
03:09And that's about 10,000 more than you would usually have deployed in the region, at least deployed before this
03:14war against Iran.
03:16So you already have a big surge in the latest troops.
03:19And this is where we have to credit.
03:21We're credit to the New York Times broke this reporting, saying that the latest surge is hundreds of special operations
03:27forces.
03:28So these are presumably troops who are highly trained to do very precise pinpoint-type missions.
03:35And, you know, sort of a cut above in at least their expertise in the types of missions and how
03:40risky they are than just your conventional infantry troops.
03:43And they are joining thousands, precisely about 2,500 Marines who have already recently arrived in the Mideast, along with
03:512,500 Army paratroopers, obviously all different types of troop expertise for different types of missions.
03:59But like I said, if you're asking me why they are there, we do not know.
04:03The Pentagon's official line right now, and this is also what the White House communications secretary said, is that they
04:09are there in order to keep Donald Trump, his military options open, to give him as many options on that
04:16menu as possible, sort of trying to make this look like just any other natural maneuver in a war.
04:20But let's not forget, it is a bit eyebrow-raising to the extent that they are surging.
04:26There's this escalation.
04:27You said escalation versus exit.
04:29The escalation is coming at a time and under the decision-making of a president who basically said last June,
04:35you might remember, that Iran's nuclear infrastructure had been, quote, obliterated.
04:39So presumably they had no more nuclear weapons.
04:42And a lot of people who've been observing this war, military experts who know far more than I do about
04:47waging a war, basically say that Trump probably went in with a lot of blunder and bluster, flush from his
04:53success, apparent success in the Venezuela raid, so on and so forth, thinking that this would be fast, easy, done
05:00and dusted in probably a few days, and that Iran would be a crying uncle and go quietly into the
05:06night.
05:06That hasn't happened.
05:07So these forces, if I were a betting man, I'd say, well, these forces are probably there because what Trump
05:13originally was planning and what he was betting on just hasn't turned out to be the case.
05:17And now he suddenly is desperate, yeah, to find that off-ramp, and he needs to be able to find
05:21a way to do that as quickly, sooner rather than later.
05:24So does that mean these forces could be preparing for this ground offensive that Washington keeps publicly saying it wants
05:30to avoid?
05:30Yeah, look, if there were a ground invasion right now, let's be clear, it would not be on the scale
05:38of a, you know, ground forces on the, boots on the ground, it would not be on the scale of,
05:42say, what we saw way back in Iraq in 2003, when you had upwards, you know, in various phases of
05:48250,000 troops.
05:50I'd said earlier that the total number of troops right now deployed, U.S. troops throughout the whole region, dispersed
05:55on ships and bases is 50,000.
05:57So that is a relatively, it sounds like a lot of troops, and it is, but it's a relatively small
06:02number when you take it against the number of troops that have been deployed in full-scale big ground invasions
06:09in the past.
06:10I think what most military experts looking on will agree on is, even at a small number, even at a
06:15larger number, ground operations almost by definition are dangerous, they are risky, they pose, yeah, risk to the troops, obviously
06:23engaged in them.
06:24But let's also take it in the context of an Iran, which has, even with diminished, you know, weapon potential,
06:31diminished munitions, has been able to remain very resilient and very defiant.
06:35And with the weapons it does have left, has been able to use them tactically with quite a bit of
06:40precision, perhaps more than the Pentagon and Donald Trump's military planners had anticipated.
06:45So those ground forces, if and how they are used, whether it's Cargillin, whether it's to get uranium from, stocks
06:53from underground, or some other mission, they presumably could be potentially exposed to a lot of very lethal Iranian incoming
07:00fire.
07:00Doug, thank you for that. France 24's Doug Herbert.
07:04Well, the Iran Speaker of Parliament has said its forces are waiting for American soldiers after the Pentagon announced that
07:09arrival of 3,500 sailors and Marines to the Middle East.
07:13The Washington Post, meanwhile, is reporting military officials are preparing options for those ground operations in Iran.
07:19We're going to talk more about this now with security expert Michael Knights, who joins me from Boston.
07:24Welcome, Michael. We just heard Doug there a moment ago talk about the big picture when it comes to this
07:29potential military action.
07:31Can you give us an idea from your expertise of what these various operations of the U.S. and Iran
07:36could be?
07:39Thanks very much for having me.
07:40And Doug didn't leave a lot unsaid for a non-military expert.
07:45He really knows his stuff.
07:47I think he's very correct when he says that the additional U.S. Marines and Special Operations Forces are there
07:55to give the U.S. options to do some very special, quite large-scale missions.
08:01That doesn't mean marching on Tehran, as he said.
08:05It doesn't even mean holding multiple Iranian cities.
08:09But it might mean holding all the Iranian-controlled islands in the Gulf around the Strait of Hormuz.
08:17It might also include taking over some key Iranian facilities for a short period of time to try and evacuate
08:25some nuclear materials or introduce international inspectors even.
08:31But Iran still maintains a very high-quality, very large military capability even a month into this war because they're
08:42basically a larger military opponent than the U.S. has taken on in the last 20 years.
08:49And it takes a lot of time to wear down the military stops and capabilities of that kind of enemy.
08:55Just sketch it out for us.
08:57I mean, what would it mean really for the U.S. to use its troops to try and do something
09:01like take Karga Island like Donald Trump has threatened?
09:06Taking the islands is not necessarily the hard part.
09:10When you focus the attention of the U.S. military on seizing even a large island like Karga Island, you
09:22tend to achieve your objectives.
09:23You take some casualties, a small number in the single digits or tens of U.S. fatalities, but you actually
09:31take the location.
09:32The problem then is that you are garrisoning a location just off the Iranian coast underneath the threat radius of
09:43all of these Iranian drone missile systems, etc.
09:46So it becomes a very miserable existence for the troops who are trying to garrison that location.
09:52And that's when you take a constant dribble of casualties.
09:55So, you know, that's the difficulty there with an in-and-out operation to seize highly enriched uranium.
10:00Nobody has ever done this before in a contested environment where somebody might be trying to stop you from getting
10:07that very sensitive, very noxious material out of the country.
10:12And nobody has ever done it at facilities that might be partially collapsed under the ground due to our earlier
10:18bombings where it might not be easy to access those materials immediately.
10:23So Iran, for its part, says it will rain fire on U.S. troops if they do come in.
10:29Can they do that? Are they capable of doing that? Talk us through Iran's defense strategy.
10:35Yes, Iran had a very deep arsenal of missiles, rockets and drone systems, the same way that Lebanese Hezbollah did
10:42before Israel undertook a quite thorough destruction of their assets last year.
10:50We're still at an earlier stage in Iran.
10:54They still have thousands of large, medium and short range ballistic missiles and anti-shipping missiles.
11:01And they still have tens of thousands of smaller drone, long range rocket systems and naval mines, plus around a
11:10million men under arms in their overall mobilization.
11:14So it's still a very large military and it prevents you from doing anything with 10,000, 20,000 additional
11:23troops on the ground in mainland Iran.
11:26You have to kind of peck around the edges and you will be under fire the whole time.
11:31The Iranians finally have also, you know, hit upon the very useful tactic of not striking directly back only at
11:41the Americans and the Israelis,
11:42but striking at global shipping and striking at the very vulnerable Gulf states on the other side of the Gulf.
11:51Michael, Iran's defense strategy has been described as what we call a mosaic strategy, something that's been developed for decades.
11:57Just break that down for us.
11:59What does that mean exactly?
12:01What it means is that for five decades now, they've been watching the U.S. undertake operations in places like
12:08Iraq, Afghanistan, the initial invasion operations.
12:12And they've been watching the U.S. do things like the Maduro raid and other kind of specific counterterrorism successes.
12:19And they've said, how can we avoid the same outcome?
12:22And as a result, what they've done is to decentralize defense decision making within various regions inside Iran.
12:31And they've mixed together a variety of high tech and low tech military systems to make it difficult to do
12:40a knockout blow against Iran's military,
12:42either the command or the actual ground level forces by dispersing them, by having a combination of missiles, drones, landmines,
12:53ground forces, naval mines and other forces.
12:57So, you know, it's a very difficult target to suppress fully.
13:03And, you know, unlike Israel that's sitting right next to Lebanese Hezbollah and could physically invade, as it is again
13:09at this moment,
13:11the U.S. is not really postured to do that anymore.
13:14We're not going to do another Iraq 2003 again.
13:17Michael, thank you for that.
13:18That's security expert Michael Knights.
13:19Thanks so much for sharing your expertise.
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