Will the U.S. Deploy Ground Troops in Iran?

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. Friday, 26 Tir 1405, July 17, 2026. The seventh night of the recent American attacks in this new round of the war began tonight at 10:30 Iran time. So far, at least, no news has come out yet, and I don't know where the fighting has been tonight. But last night, it can be said, the southern provinces of the country, namely Khuzestan, Hormozgan, and Sistan and Baluchestan, were under fire. Military radar centers, bases, and likewise

1:00 transport bridges, even a wheat depot, and other places were attacked. What particularly draws attention is that the attacks hit facilities belonging to the Army: the 92nd Armored Division in Khuzestan and the 88th Armored Division in Sistan and Baluchestan. This raises the question of what these armored divisions, which essentially have tanks and armored personnel carriers, have to do with the Strait of Hormuz. A serious question has arisen about the objective of this operation, which we will get to shortly.

1:57 As of tonight, according to Iran's Ministry of Health, 38 dead and 400 wounded is the figure announced over the past six nights. Of course, Iran has in turn attacked American bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, and even Oman, and tonight Kuwait announced that the Iranian attacks also damaged a desalination plant and a power plant in Kuwait. Axios, whose reports often turn out to be accurate, has said that a plan to escalate the war,

2:54 which includes extensive attacks on Iran's power plants, bridges, and military centers, is under review at the White House, but Mr. Trump has not yet made a final decision. An attack on Kuh-e Kolang, two kilometers south of Natanz, is also under review. It is said that after the destruction at Natanz, Iran built facilities under this mountain, which is granite and very hard and part of the central Zagros heights, and moved parts of Natanz there. Iran has of course never confirmed this, but these days

3:48 news about Kuh-e Kolang has been widely discussed in the international media. America has also brought 30 military refueling aircraft to Israel, and it is said this number will increase further and reach the level before the 40-day war. I don't know exactly how many more tankers will go to Israel, but it is said the reason Israeli airfields were chosen is that they are secure, since America's other bases in the region have so far come under Iranian missile and drone attacks.

4:46 But before we get to the discussion of the strategy of this round of the war, I must mention one more point, and that is Mr. JD Vance's interview with Joe Rogan, a roughly hours-long interview that took place the day before yesterday. As expected, it caused a great uproar. We talked in the previous program about the part of the interview in which Mr. Vance defended negotiations and said that to attack Iran you would have to send 150,000 troops, and that America basically does not do and will not do such a thing. But the part of his remarks that has become highly controversial and has drawn many attacks is where

5:47 he said in the interview that people inside the Israeli government and a network of their supporters tried to sabotage America's negotiations with Iran and push American public opinion toward continuing the war. Time magazine had also written that Israel spent several million dollars on a digital campaign about the war, and now against the agreement. This part of Mr. JD Vance's remarks has met with fierce attacks from Israel's supporters. Publications such as the New York Post, and Fox News, attacked Mr. Vance in one way or another, and in Israel too there have been

6:51 harsh attacks on him, saying he wants to drive a wedge between Israel and America, or that his remarks are a conspiracy theory, and things of that sort. But the interesting point in the repercussions of Mr. Vance's remarks is that, according to the Wall Street Journal, a rift has now emerged within the Republican Party. The traditional wing of the party, which favors intervention over negotiation, criticized Mr. Vance's remarks, but the MAGA wing, so-called Make America Great Again, who are Mr. Trump's supporters and are strongly isolationist, welcomed Mr.

7:48 Vance's remarks and said that, in principle, no country, including Israel, should seek to set the direction of American foreign policy. But in any case, this important question has now been raised in various American and European publications: with these statements by Mr. Vance strongly defending negotiations, and with these attacks and this rise in tensions, which began on Iran's side when it struck oil tankers and commercial ships with drones, three south of the Strait of Hormuz and two in another area, and the fire of this war kept rising, America struck, Iran struck harder,

8:45 America struck harder, and now we have reached the seventh night, where is all this supposed to lead in the end? Some military experts comment that the targets America is hitting, some of which are deep inside Khuzestan, for example, or are transport bridges that could be used to support military forces, are laying the groundwork for America to land troops on Iranian soil and at least take southern Iran. Of course, the counter-question others then ask is: even supposing America does this, lands tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands

9:44 of troops to capture four Iranian provinces, how does it intend to hold them, and then what? Because threats to the Strait of Hormuz, or to the countries of the region that are America's allies, or to American bases can also be carried out from deep inside Iranian territory. Missiles and drones can be launched from Khorramabad, Yazd, Semnan, and Kerman, and even from the northern provinces of Mazandaran and Gilan, toward these southern areas of Iran. So even if America does this, then what? As for the question of going further, something Mr. Vance strongly rejected in this interview, that is, going to take Tehran, which would be

10:40 a huge military operation, Mr. Vance said it was not and is not on America's agenda. And after Mr. Vance's interview, the White House's only reaction was that there is agreement between the president and his vice president and no disagreement. But in any case, some statements by American officials that these actions could bring down the regime, and on the other side the insistence the Israelis have expressed several times that the Kurds should be armed and come in, and the result of which might in fact be a collapsed Iran embroiled in civil wars, which may be what the Israelis desire, have, before anything serious has even

11:36 happened, caused the Islamic Republic, which has treated our Kurdish compatriots in the harshest ways, to once again set its war machine in motion against Kurdish forces. Today, for instance, they attacked the headquarters of the Komala Party of Kurdistan with eight heavy Kheibar missiles, leaving at least nine dead and dozens wounded. In any case, this issue is a big question mark. Supporters of war inside Iran are also campaigning hard in their writings on social media, saying: yes, America later wants to attack and send ground

12:29 troops, so we must strike preemptively, strike this way, strike that way. In effect, they are pushing to escalate, intensify, and heat up the atmosphere of war. Some believe that a number of Iranian hardliners are also under the influence of, or lobbying and espionage by, the Israelis to fan the flames of war. In any case, all these factors have had, and are having, a devastating effect on Iran's economy, and it intensifies every day. Today, Friday, a holiday, the dollar passed the 191,000-toman mark. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.