As Middle East conflict spreads

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump yes­ter­day pushed back against mount­ing crit­i­cism that he hasn’t done enough to ex­plain why it was nec­es­sary to start a war with Iran now or to ar­tic­u­late his vi­sion for an endgame to the es­ca­lat­ing con­flict.

The frus­tra­tion is com­ing not just from the po­lit­i­cal left but al­so from his MA­GA base, as the con­flict ex­pands, en­er­gy prices surge and the death toll in the Mid­dle East ris­es in a war that the ad­min­is­tra­tion sug­gests may on­ly be in the open­ing stages.

Trump al­so seemed to leave open the pos­si­bil­i­ty for a more ex­ten­sive US mil­i­tary in­volve­ment, telling the New York Post yes­ter­day that he was not rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of boots on the ground. It came as De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth told re­porters the ad­min­is­tra­tion would not get in­to the “fool­ish” ex­er­cise of telegraph­ing “what we will or will not do.”

“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.

“I say ‘prob­a­bly don’t need them,’ (or) ‘if they were nec­es­sary.’”

The pres­i­dent, and top aides, sought to de­fend his ap­proach as Iran con­tin­ued to re­tal­i­ate by fir­ing drones and mis­siles at Is­rael, Amer­i­can bases in the re­gion, and at Per­sian Gulf neigh­bours. Is­rael and Hezbol­lah, the Iran-backed mili­tia in Lebanon, al­so trad­ed strikes yes­ter­day, open­ing an­oth­er front in the con­flict.

Trump strode back in­to of­fice last year on an “Amer­i­ca First” pledge to keep the US out of the sort of “for­ev­er wars” that bogged down some of his re­cent White House pre­de­ces­sors. Cen­tral to his for­eign pol­i­cy out­look has been his call to “aban­don the failed pol­i­cy of na­tion build­ing and regime change.”

But now Trump finds him­self in a war of his own choos­ing that’s spurring con­cern the US could be dragged in­to an­oth­er pro­longed con­flict in the Mid­dle East.

Speak­ing at a White House event yes­ter­day, Trump said the joint US and Is­rael mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion was “sub­stan­tial­ly ahead of sched­ule” and es­ti­mat­ed that it would take four to five weeks to meet the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ob­jec­tives — al­though he said it could take longer.

“We have ca­pa­bil­i­ty to go far longer than that,” Trump said.

Hegseth was even more vague about the time frame.

“Pres­i­dent Trump has all the lat­i­tude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks,” Hegseth said. “It could move up. It could move back.”

The US mil­i­tary ex­pects to en­dure ad­di­tion­al ca­su­al­ties in its op­er­a­tion against Iran, Joint Chiefs Chair­man Dan Caine told re­porters. As of yes­ter­day, six US ser­vice mem­bers had been killed in ac­tion and oth­ers bad­ly in­jured as Iran car­ried out a bar­rage of re­tal­ia­to­ry strikes around the re­gion.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion has not de­tailed who it wants to see take con­trol of Iran fol­low­ing the killing of Iran­ian Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei and dozens of oth­er top lead­ers in the open­ing salvos of the con­flict.

Trump, in an­nounc­ing the start of the ma­jor com­bat op­er­a­tions, called on the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps to put down their arms. But his­to­ry sug­gests that air pow­er alone is un­like­ly to bring about the kind of regime change that Trump says he wants to see in Iran.

The pres­i­dent al­so hasn’t com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing mem­bers of the Iran­ian op­po­si­tion, whom he has called on to rise up against the rul­ing Is­lam­ic theoc­ra­cy once the bomb­ing cam­paign is done.

Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials told con­gres­sion­al staff in pri­vate brief­in­gs on Sun­day that US in­tel­li­gence did not sug­gest Iran was prepar­ing to launch a pre-emp­tive strike against the US. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials in­stead ac­knowl­edged there was a more gen­er­al threat in the re­gion from Iran’s mis­siles and proxy forces.

Yet, Trump yes­ter­day re­peat­ed his as­ser­tion that the US need­ed to take ac­tion be­cause of con­cerns that Iran was aim­ing to build bal­lis­tic mis­siles that could reach the US.

Iran hasn’t ac­knowl­edged it was build­ing or seek­ing to build in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­siles. The US De­fence In­tel­li­gence Agency, how­ev­er, said in an un­clas­si­fied re­port last year that Iran could de­vel­op a mil­i­tar­i­ly vi­able in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­sile by 2035 “should Tehran de­cide to pur­sue the ca­pa­bil­i­ty.”

Trump al­so re­peat­ed his claim that Iran was seek­ing to re­build its nu­clear pro­gramme, even af­ter US strikes car­ried out last June dur­ing the 12-day Is­rael-Iran war had, in his words, “oblit­er­at­ed” three key nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties.