Iran conflict
Second Vietnam? Trump undeterred by Iran threat
Updated March 17, 2026 – 6:37 p.mReading time: 1 min.
How does the USA want to proceed in Iran – and how is the government dealing with the sensitive issue of ground operations on site? What Trump says about it.
US President Donald Trump is not ruling out the deployment of ground troops in Iran, even after a warning from Tehran about a second Vietnam. “No, I’m not afraid of it. I’m not afraid of anything,” he said during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin at the White House. A reporter had confronted the Republican about Iran threatening that the United States should read up on what happened in Vietnam if it sent troops.
Trump had not ruled out such an operation in the past few weeks since the offensive against Iran began. The debate about the so-called “boots on the ground”, i.e. whether soldiers are deployed on enemy soil, is considered extremely sensitive in the USA. Since the long, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American public has been particularly sensitive to the deployment of ground troops to the Middle East.
The US ground operation in the Vietnam War turned out to be a trauma for the United States. Despite technical superiority, the military was stuck in the jungle terrain of Southeast Asia. The war ultimately claimed the lives of tens of thousands of US soldiers and divided society.
