Leaders of Elite Paratrooper Unit Ordered to Middle East as Trump Weighs Iran Ground War

Maj. Gen. Brandon Tegtmeier, the chief of the 82nd Airborne Division, and his headquarters staff have been ordered to the Middle East as the War Department awaits a White House decision about the deployment of the unit to the Middle East for possible ground operations in Iran, two government sources tell The Intercept.

The deployment includes the division’s “headquarters element,” support staff, and some personnel who manage logistics, planning, and command operations, the sources said.

The order comes as the Pentagon is weighing the broader deployment of the 82nd Airborne’s “Immediate Response Force,” a 3,000-soldier brigade capable of deploying anywhere in the world within a day, which was first reported by the New York Times on Monday. It also comes as thousands of Marines are headed to the region along with at least three more ships, including the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship with F-35 attack jets with vertical takeoff and landing capability, as well as attack and transport helicopters.

Open source reporting suggests dozens of transport aircraft used to ferry troops and cargo have been flying out of airfields used by America’s most elite commandos, including the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6.

U.S. ground troops could be employed to carry out a number of varied missions from more conventional combat operations to specialized commando missions. These could include seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub, or securing that country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

“We got two Marine expeditionary units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Fox News Sunday over the weekend. “I don’t know if you take the island or you blockade the island. But I know this: the day we control that island, this regime, this terrorist regime, has been weakened. It will die on a vine.”

“People are going to have to go and get it,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this month when asked about Iran’s uranium.

The potential expansion of Operation Epic Fury into a ground campaign would be another major escalation of President Donald Trump’s expanding world war.

One of the U.S. officials, who has been briefed on Operation Epic Fury, speculated that Trump’s fixation on and fascination with the supposed success of Operation Absolute Resolve — in which the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro — might prompt something similar in Iran.

Orders for the deployment of thousands more members of the division may come within hours, said one of the officials on Tuesday afternoon.

The Office of the Secretary of War referred questions about the deployment of ground forces in Iran to the White House, which did not immediately return a request for comment.

Last week, Special Operations Command chief Adm. Frank M. Bradley said that he has long viewed Iran and its proxies threatening the freedom of navigation in and around the Middle East as “the most dangerous crisis” facing the United States. “I would anticipate that along those same lines, the ability to project force into increasingly contested environments where U.S. national interests are threatened is the characterization of the next most dangerous crisis,” he told the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations. “That is why that we have made our ability to do that our top modernization priority. If you look at the operation conducted under Absolute Resolve into Venezuela, I would argue it’s the most sophisticated integrated inter-agency joint force raid ever conducted.”

The U.S. forces being sped to the Middle East will augment more than 40,000 troops already stationed in the region and forces brought in before the Trump administration began its latest war with Iran on February 28. This included dozens of fighter jets, bombers, and other aircraft, as well as two carrier strike groups. (The USS Gerald R. Ford had to since abandon the fight and travel to port, following a fire on the ship.)

The Pentagon has already requested $200 billion in supplemental funds to pay for its war on Iran. The ultimate cost of the war is expected to run into the trillions of dollars.