President Trump will not rule out sending troops into Iran

By Sean Rayment

Donald Trump has refused to rule out sending American troops into Iran after launching a massive bombing campaign that the president says could last several weeks.

The president said in an interview with the New York Post that he did not have the “yips” when it comes to sending Americans to war.

“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,’” he said.

“I don’t say it. I say, ‘Probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth reaffirmed the President’s position when he told reporters: “President Trump ensures our enemies understand we’ll go as far as we need to go to advance American interests.

“But we’re not dumb about it,” Hegseth said. “You don’t have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years.”

Meanwhile, the administration has come under fire from both Republicans and Democrats after struggling to clearly define its objectives. Hegseth declared in a briefing that the conflict is not a “regime change war”, while the president has said the goal of his campaign is “freedom for the people”.

Hegseth added: “We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear-eyed, as the president has been — unlike other presidents — about the foolish policies in the past that recklessly pulled us into things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives.”

Separately, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Trump was forced into a pre-emptive response after learning of an imminent Israeli attack, as officials knew such an action would trigger retaliation against US military personnel in the Middle East.

“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone – the United States or Israel or anyone – they were going to respond, and respond against the United States,” he said.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Mr Rubio’s comments have provoked backlash from some American politicians.

“There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians,” said Mark Warner, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel with the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.”

Meanwhile, President Trump appears to have ruled out the possibility of peace talks with Iran in the near future.

The president posted on social media: “Their air defence, Air Force, Navy and leadership is gone… They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!’”

Mr Trump claimed the US military had enough weapons stockpiled to “fight forever” and that his “Operation Fury” was ahead of schedule.

“We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections. But whatever the time is, it’s OK. Whatever it takes,” he said.

Israel hacked nearly all of Tehran’s traffic cameras to spy on Ali Khamenei before launching an attack to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader.

It has also emerged that Israeli spies spent years surveilling the Ayatollah’s bodyguards by accessing the Iranian capital’s traffic camera network, intelligence sources claimed.

Operatives were even reported to have hacked a security camera facing Khamenei’s compound that showed where security guards would park their cars.

The camera enabled spies to know when the Ayatollah would be at home and to disrupt mobile phone service around his compound so aides would not be able to call for help in the event of an ambush.

Details of the Mossad operation were first reported by the Financial Times as Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon on day four of the war.

The hacked traffic camera images in Tehran were encrypted and transmitted to Israel, allowing intelligence officials to determine the addresses, hours of work, routes and duties of Iran’s most senior security personnel before the US-Israeli attack at the weekend.

“We knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem,” one Israeli intelligence official told the Financial Times. “And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.”

In the latest barrage, Israel reportedly employed a method called social network analysis to study patterns of behaviour and better understand how people interact.

With this intelligence, Israel and the CIA determined it would be easier to kill Khamenei at the start of the assault rather than targeting him in the midst of a war, when he could escape to a bunker.

An individual briefed on the attack told the Financial Times that the assault on Iran had been planned for months, but the timeline was adjusted once it was revealed that Khamenei would be attending a meeting at his compound in person on Saturday morning.

On the day, thanks to the hacked traffic cameras and access to Iranian mobile phone networks, at least two Israeli intelligence officers, working independently, were able to confirm that Khamenei’s meeting was on time.

Mr Trump told Fox News that Khamenei “was eliminated along with his inner circle as they gathered for breakfast”.

The Israeli military said that striking during the day, instead of at night, had “allowed Israel to achieve tactical surprise for the second time, despite heavy Iranian preparedness”.

Israel had deployed jets hours earlier so they would arrive at the right location on time and fired as many as 30 precision strikes on Khamenei’s complex, according to a former senior Israeli intelligence official.

The US military also launched cyber attacks to allow the Israeli jets to reach the compound.