Trump faces his most difficult Iran war decision

Washington: President Donald Trump is facing perhaps the most daunting question of the war with Iran, one that could define his time in office: Will he put US troops on the ground in Iran to secure some 970 pounds of enriched uranium that Tehran could potentially use to build nuclear weapons?

Trump has offered shifting reasons for launching the war, but he has been consistent in articulating that a primary objective in joining Israel in the military action is ensuring that Iran will “never have a nuclear weapon”.

The president has been more circumspect about how far he’s willing to go to follow through on his pledge to destroy Iran’s weapons programme once and for all, including seizing or destroying the near-bomb-grade nuclear material that Iran possesses.

Much of it is believed to be buried under the rubble of a mountain facility pummelled in US bombings Trump ordered last June that he had claimed “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear programme.

It’s a risky, complicated project that many nuclear experts say cannot be done without a sizable deployment of US troops into Iran, a dangerous and politically fraught operation for the Republican president, who has vowed not to entangle the US in the sort of extended and bloody Middle East conflicts that still loom large on America’s psyche.

At the same time, lawmakers and experts remain concerned that if Iran hard-liners emerge from the fighting, they’ll be more motivated than ever to build nuclear weapons as they look to deter the US and Israel from future military action, a dynamic that makes taking control of Iran’s enriched uranium even more critical.

That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponise its programme.

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., say they remain deeply fearful that the president has put the nation on a path that will require putting troops inside Iran for what he called Trump’s confused and chaotic objectives.

“Some of the objectives that he continues to espouse simply cannot be achieved without a physical presence there -- securing the uranium cannot be done without a physical presence,” said Blumenthal, a member

of the Senate Armed Services Committee.