Amid Heightened Tensions with Iran, a Thorny Question: Would Regional Partners Accept a Massive Influx of US Troops?
Mike Sweeney | May 20, 2019
As US-Iranian tensions rose over the past week, reports surfaced that the United States — having already deployed F-35s, a Patriot missile battery, and B-52 bombers to the region — has contingency plans to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East. Although the sources who provided that information insisted those troops in themselves would not constitute an invasion force, it has naturally led to speculation about that prospect.
Ever since I read of the alleged deployment, one question has kept going through my mind: Where would 120,000 troops actually go? And moving beyond that initial deployment, isn’t it incumbent to ask which — if any — countries in the region would volunteer to host an American land invasion of Iran? After all, what is the coercive or signaling value of deploying 120,000 US troops (or possibly more), if they don’t have a direct path to attacking Iran itself and the political support of the host government to do so? Is such an operation even feasible anymore, given developments in the Middle East since (and because of) the 2003 invasion of Iraq?
https://mwi.usma.edu/amid-heightened-tensions-iran-thorny-question-regional-partners-accept-massive-influx-us-troops/
