Anything is possible: Trump considering sending ground troops to Iran - media

President Donald Trump has privately expressed "serious interest" in deploying US troops to Iran, according to two US officials, one former official and another person familiar with the discussions, NBC writes.

According to the sources, Trump has discussed the idea of ​​sending ground troops to Iran with his aides and Republican Party representatives outside the White House. He also hopes that post-war Iran will have uranium reserves under US control and that the two sides will cooperate in oil production, as in Venezuela after the overthrow of Nicolas Maduro.

The private discussions did not discuss a large-scale ground invasion of Iran, the sources said. Trump's idea is to deploy a small contingent of American troops in the country, which will be used to solve specific strategic tasks. According to the interlocutors, the President has not yet ordered the deployment of troops.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump "reserves the right to any options for action."

Earlier this week, in an interview with The New York Post, the President did not rule out the option of a ground operation in Iran. Trump noted that, unlike previous presidents, he "has no fear about sending troops," adding that such intervention is unlikely to be necessary.

American troops could appear in Iran in the event of the overthrow of the ayatollah's regime, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, director of the Iran program at the Washington think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. They could be used to help build a U.S.-Iranian relationship similar to that established with Venezuela, or to ensure control over Iran's uranium stockpiles, believed to be hidden deep underground at a number of nuclear sites.

"We can't allow the country to become a failed state with a 'nuclear bazaar,'" the expert stressed.

Joel Rayburn, a former Trump administration official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, suggested that the United States could conduct "special operations landings" on targets that "absolutely need to be destroyed or neutralized" but cannot be bombed from the air.

"This is the case where you land, attack the target or conduct a raid, and then fly away," he said.

Earlier, sources told The Washington Post that Trump had offered Kurdish leaders in Iran and Iraq support in a possible war against the Iranian regime during the talks.