Retired ARMY general: 'If you loved Iraq and Afghanistan you’re going to love Iran'

Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson said that it's clear to him that President Donald Trump appears intent on full-fledged war in Iran.

Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, Anderson said that sending 1,000 troops to the Middle East tells him that "they're serious about conducting some kind of a ground operation in Iran."

"Why else would you be sending the immediate ready brigade from the 82nd airborne?" he asked. "And of course, that would be a tremendous logistics operation. I mean, it would probably take 22 hours or so to actually deploy over there to some sort of a staging area."

He explained they would likely be housed in Qatar and "have a couple squadrons of C-130s in order to conduct some kind of an air assault into Kharg Island or one of the other islands in the Strait of Hormuz."

There are also two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU) en route, with one that may already be "at the mouth of the Persian Gulf." MEU's are described by the Marine website as a kind of rapid-reaction force of roughly "2,200 Marines and Sailors."

"But, you know, this tells me that they're very serious about conducting ground operations," he continued. "And all I can say is, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you're going to love Iran."

Brown University's Washington School of International and Public Affairs charted the full cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing that 7,052 U.S. soldiers died in the wars, 21 Defense Department civilians also died, along with 8,189 U.S. contractors, 680 journalists or media workers, and 892 humanitarian aid workers were killed in the wars that took place from 2001 to 2024. It doesn't count the civilian death count, which is somewhere between 363,939 and 387,072. In economic terms, it will ultimately cost the U.S. about $8 trillion, including veterans' care, over the next 30 years.

Thus far, Trump has already asked Congress for an additional $200 billion to fund the war. This does not include the over $12.7 billion the U.S. spent in the first six days of the war, The Guardian outlined last week.

National security analyst David Sanger, who also serves as the correspondent for the New York Times, reported Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud is pushing the U.S. to go "all-in" and "defeat the Iranians."

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