Brennan: Trump ‘very well may decide to put US troops on the ground’ in Iran

Former CIA Director John Brennan expressed concerns on Monday about the long-term implications of President Trump’s ongoing military operations in the Middle East.

The president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have not ruled out putting boots on the ground in Iran, though Trump told the New York Post on Monday that the administration was “nowhere near” taking that step. 

“He’s not ruling anything out because he very well may decide to put U.S. troops on the ground, carry out some type of operation, but these are the things that should have been thought about through before the operation took place,” Brennan said during an interview with MS NOW on Monday afternoon. 

The former CIA director told anchor Nicolle Wallace that Trump’s actions during his second term in the Oval Office has led him to believe the president holds a short-term view of his administration’s policies. 

“All of his steps don’t take into account the second, third and fourth order of effects,” Brennan said. 

“Whether it’s tariffs or whether it’s the deployment of ICE or whether it’s the military operation in Iran, I think he just looks, ‘What’s my next move?’, and he doesn’t think about, and obviously he doesn’t take into account then, the intelligence assessment that was given to him and to the other seniors that the military operation was unlikely to topple the regime, and so I think he’s trying to figure out exactly the next steps,” Brennan continued.

He later added that Trump appears to be taking “not just one day at a time,” but “one hour at a time.”

“He’s going to go with his gut, again, irrespective of what the strategic implications are down the road,” Brennan said. 

Since the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran at the end of February, retaliatory drone strikes from Iran on U.S. bases in the Middle East have killed seven service members. Hegseth said last week that this number is likely to grow.

“There will be more casualties,” Hegseth told CBS News during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday, later adding, “but that doesn’t weaken us one bit, it stiffens our spine and our resolve to say this is a fight we will finish.”