The White House said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump does not rule out deploying ground forces to Iran, after a Democratic senator emerged from a classified briefing warning that current objectives of the war would likely require a ground troop deployment.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked about the senator’s remarks, said Trump “does not rule options out as commander in chief” and cautioned against taking at face value “anything that a Democrat on Capitol Hill says right now about the president’s thinking.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) made the warning after a closed-door military and intelligence briefing earlier on Tuesday, saying he left “more dissatisfied and angry” than from any briefing in his 15 years in the Senate.
“We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here,” Blumenthal said.
The lawmaker said the briefers were unable to answer his questions about the scope or timeline of potential ground operations. He also said he could not elaborate further due to the classified nature of the briefing.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who also attended the briefing, said she could not discuss what transpired but called what she heard “not just concerning—it is disturbing.” She said the administration had not shown Congress “any plans for what [Trump] wants to do for the day after.”
The classified nature of the briefing is itself at the center of a growing Democratic push for more transparency in the United States’ military operation in Iran. The Trump administration has said the U.S.–Israeli strikes, which started on Feb. 28, were a preemptive attack on the Iranian regime primarily to prevent it from developing and obtaining a nuclear weapon.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) sent a letter to the president demanding that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appear before Congress under oath in public hearings.
“This is the reason why we’ve been calling over and over again for them to come out of the classified briefings, to allow us to have these conversations, as much as we can, in an open setting,” Rosen said.
In the letter, the three Democratic senators criticized the administration, saying that it had provided shifting justifications for the conflict since military operations began. They cited a progression of stated war goals ranging from encouraging Iranians to overthrow their government, to limited strikes on military sites, to installing a new Iranian leader, and most recently to demanding unconditional surrender, and possibly deploying U.S. ground forces.
“These ever-shifting goals and explanations suggest there is no clear plan,” the senators wrote. “The American people—including our men and women in uniform—deserve clear answers about the war and accountability from your administration.”
In response to the Democratic criticism Tuesday, Leavitt said that members of Congress who now oppose the military campaign voted three years ago for a resolution condemning Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. She said the president was “finally taking the action that so many Democrats have called on the commander in chief to do for many, many years.”
The White House pointed The Epoch Times to an X post by White House Communications Director Steven Cheung replying to a video of Blumenthal’s remarks.
“[Blumenthal] is a known liar and fraud,” Cheung wrote. “Look no further than his lie about serving in Vietnam. He didn’t.”
