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A report late Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump is more bullish in private about putting American soldiers on the ground in Iran than he has been publicly stirred immediate condemnation among lawmakers opposed to the illegal military attack, now entering its second week of destructive and deadly operations.

“This is madness,” declared Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) in response to NBC News reporting, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the conversations, that stated Trump “has privately expressed serious interest in deploying US troops on the ground inside of Iran.”

While the White House pushed back on the contents of the reporting, Trump himself has said that he does not hold reservations about deploying ground troops if he deems it necessary.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground,” Trump told the New York Post on Monday. “Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it. I say, ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also reacted to the new reporting.

Report: CENTCOM Suggests Trump’s War in Iran Will Likely Last Through September

“Donald Trump is hellbent on escalating his reckless war and is now considering putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran,” said Schumer in an online statement. “The American people do not want more war in the Middle East. No boots on the ground. No more war.”

Early morning on Saturday, Trump issued a fresh threat to the people of Iran, declaring in a social media post: “Today Iran will be hit very hard!”

In the same post, the U.S. president falsely claimed that Iran had “surrendered” to neighboring countries in the region following a series of missile attacks over recent days by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units on select targets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and others.

What Trump was referring to was a video message issued by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier in the day in which he apologized for the strikes — carried out by IRGC commanders operating independently in the wake of the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a U.S.-Israeli strike earlier this week — and said that no further such attacks would take place “unless those countries launch an attack on us.”

In his remarks, Pezeshkian rejected Trump’s insistence on Friday for an “unconditional surrender” by Iran. “That we surrender unconditionally is a dream that they must take with themselves to the grave,” he said. “What we adhere to are international laws and humanitarian framework.”

Pezeshkian called for diplomacy to bring the war of aggression by the US and Israel to an end. “We aim to work hand‑in‑hand with our dear brothers and neighbors in the region to establish lasting peace and stability, and we hope this goal will be achieved,” he said.

However, if hostilities launched from factions in neighboring countries resumed, Pezeshkian warned, “all military bases and interests of criminal America and the fake Zionist regime on land, at sea, and in the air across the region will be considered primary targets and will come under the powerful and crushing strikes of the mighty armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In remarks on Thursday, after Trump previously refused to rule out boots on the ground, Iranian Foreign Minister Foreign Minister Abbas Araghch told NBC News that the country’s armed forces are prepared.

“We are waiting for them,” Araghchi said. “Because we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”

Foreign policy experts warn that Trump has created an untenable situation for himself by demanding the “unconditional surrender” as well as stating that he must personally be involved in the choosing the next leader of Iran — an overt call for regime change in a nation of 90 million people.

“No country surrenders from airpower alone,” said Ryan Costello, policy director for the National Iranian American Council, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, on Friday. “Trump has created a trap for himself: either he backs down on his unattainable goal to dictate Iran, or he climbs up the escalation ladder, considering even more disastrous steps like boots on the ground.”

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Jon Queally is senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

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