As US troops sail to Middle East, how likely is Trump to order boots on the ground? The Guardian Is Iran a Political Problem for Trump? Tell Me How Long the War Lasts.

Jordan Calloway
The Take
Jordan Calloway · Government Secrets & FOIA

The Guardian's breathless speculation about Trump's Middle East intentions misses the actual story: we still don't know what promises he made to Netanyahu or Saudi leadership during those closed-door meetings his team refuses to document. FOIA requests filed by the National Security Archive in December 2024 for Trump transition records remain unanswered. That's your lede. The framing—"how likely is Trump to order boots on the ground?"—treats military escalation as an abstract probability exercise when it's really a policy already baked into backchannels we're not allowed to see. His 2017 playbook (Syria strikes within weeks) suggests the answer is "very," but this piece treats it like fortune-telling. Here's what matters: the State Department's legal authority memo justifying any Iran action will eventually surface under FOIA. When it does, we'll find either genuine intelligence or a stretched rationale. I'd bet on the latter. Until then, journalists asking "how likely" are asking the wrong question. Ask instead: what commitments already exist, and who signed off on them?

What We Know: World Update

The New York Times Ignore the bombast – the Iran war is only likely to end one way CNN ‘I have no

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