President Donald Trump on Saturday declined to rule out deploying U.S. ground troops to Iran, signaling that the White House is keeping military options open.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning to Florida from Dover Air Force Base, where he attended a dignified transfer ceremony for six American service members killed in the conflict, Trump said boots on the ground remained a remote but possible step.

“Could there be? Possibly for a very good reason,” Trump said when asked whether U.S. troops might eventually enter Iran.

“And I would say if we ever did that, they would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level,” he added.

“We’ve wiped out their navy — 44 ships. We’ve wiped out their air force, every plane,” he said. “We’ve wiped out most of their missiles.”

The president also claimed U.S. forces had heavily damaged Iranian drone production and missile manufacturing facilities and killed large segments of the country’s leadership.

“We’re winning the war by a lot,” Trump said. “We decimated their whole evil empire.”

Despite the confident tone, Trump declined to put any limit on how long the operation might continue.

“Whatever it takes,” he said when asked about the duration of the campaign.

Trump also raised the possibility that U.S. forces could eventually move to secure Iranian nuclear material, though he suggested such a step would likely come later.

“We haven’t talked about it,” Trump said. “But at some point maybe we will. That would be a great thing.”

Trump also dismissed reports that Russia may be sharing intelligence with Iran about U.S. military assets in the region.

“I have no indication whatsoever,” Trump said. “They can give all the information that they want, but the people they’re sending it to are overwhelmed.”

Standing nearby on the plane, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said he hoped Moscow was not assisting Tehran.

Trump also pointed to a sharp decline in Iran’s ability to launch drones and missiles.

“We think they’re at about 9 percent of what they sent out in the first two days,” Trump said, attributing the drop to U.S. strikes on Iranian launch infrastructure.

He said American forces have destroyed roughly 70 percent of Iran’s missile launchers.

“The launchers are a big deal,” Trump said. “Very hard to get, very expensive.”

Even so, Iran launched another wave of drones and missiles at U.S. allies on Saturday.

Trump reiterated his demand that Iran accept “unconditional surrender,” arguing that Tehran’s recent apology to neighboring Arab countries after missile strikes signaled weakness.

“All of a sudden they apologize to the Middle Eastern states that they shot at them,” Trump said. “That’s a surrender right there.”

Still, Trump signaled caution about expanding the conflict further by arming Kurdish forces that could potentially fight Iranian troops on the ground.

“We don’t want to make the war any more complex than it already is,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Trump attended the solemn transfer ceremony at Dover honoring the six American soldiers killed in Kuwait after an Iranian drone strike hit a U.S. operations site.

Reflecting on the moment, the president struck a more somber note.

“It’s a sad part of war,” Trump said. “It’s the bad part of war.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)