A senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee said American “boots on the ground” would be a necessary step in the war against Iran. “I just don’t see any other way,” Representative Pat Fallon, Republican of Texas, who chairs the Military Personnel subcommittee, said in an interview with Fox News. He added: “We can’t leave until the job is done.”
Once U.S. troops are deployed, he asserted, the Iranian “people are going to rise up and the I.R.G.C. is going to melt away,” referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military force behind the Iranian government. “Then we can see some kind of moderate faction coming out and eventually taking over,” Fallon said.