President Trump said Monday that he is not ruling out deploying American ground forces to Iran if circumstances require it, while asserting that the ongoing military campaign has progressed faster than anticipated, including the elimination of dozens of senior Iranian leaders.

In an interview with The New York Post, Trump addressed the possibility of sending troops, distancing himself from blanket pledges often made by other presidents. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said after launching strikes Saturday to decapitate Iran’s military and political leadership. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

The president had told the Daily Mail on Sunday that he expected the conflict to last “four weeks or so,” but on Monday he suggested the timeline could be shorter than initially projected.

“It’s going to go pretty quickly,” he said. “We’re right on schedule, way ahead of schedule in terms of leadership — 49 killed — and that was, you know, going to take, we figured, at least four weeks, and we did it in one day.”

Trump also dismissed concerns that Iran might respond to the US action through terrorist attacks.

“We’ll take it out. Whatever. It’s like everything else, we’ll take it out,” Trump said.

Explaining his decision-making process, the president said he authorized the strike following what he described as unsuccessful final negotiations held Thursday in Geneva, citing intelligence indicating that Iran had resumed covert nuclear activity.

“We had very serious negotiations, and they were there, and then they pulled back,” he said.

“They wanted to make a nuclear weapon, so we destroyed them completely, but we found they were in a totally different site — totally different — because the sites that we took out were permanent. They tried to use them, but they were totally, as I said correctly before, obliterated, right? So then we found them working on a totally different area, a totally different site, in order to make a nuclear weapon through enrichment — so it was just time.”

“I said, ‘Let’s go.’”

Trump maintained that he is confident he made the correct call and argued that most Americans ultimately back the action, even if early polling suggests otherwise. He contended that preventing what he called “crazy people” from acquiring nuclear weapons outweighed the risks of a broader regional conflict.

A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted over the weekend found that 27% of respondents supported the strikes, while 43% opposed them and 29% were undecided. Surveys taken before the operation indicated similarly limited backing for a potential war.

“I think that the polling is very good, but I don’t care about polling. I have to do the right thing. I have to do the right thing. This should have been done a long time ago,” Trump said.

“I don’t think the polling is low,” he went on. “Look, whether polling is low or not, I think the polling is probably fine. But it’s not a question of polling. You cannot let Iran, who’s a nation that has been run by crazy people, have a nuclear weapon.

“I think people are very impressed with what is happening, actually,” Trump insisted. “I think it’s a silent — if you did a real poll, the silent poll — and it’s like a silent majority.”

{Matzav.com}