Name: Iran says its 'waiting' for US ground troops, as more American marines arrive in region | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-03-29T21:31:56.000Z
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The Speaker of Iran's Parliament has warned the US that Iran's military is "waiting" for a ground attack and ready to "rain fire" upon any troops that try to enter Iranian territory.

He claimed Donald Trump is planning a ground operation in secret.

His comments come as fresh reports in The Washington Post suggest the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran.

The Pentagon hasn't commented on the reports yet.

More than 3,000 US troops arrived in the region on Friday, on board the USS Tripoli.

But Donald Trump has claimed in recent days that talks with Iran have been going very well.

Meanwhile, Iran has threatened to target Israeli and American universities in the Middle East in retaliation for a strike on a university in Tehran.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps warned staff and students, as well as nearby residents, to keep a distance of one kilometer from American universities in the region.

It comes as the Houthis in Yemen say they'll keep targeting Israel in the coming days, after launching their first attacks since the war began.

The group, which is backed by Iran, says it fired two waves of missiles and drones on Saturday.

This report from our World Affairs correspondent, Joe Inwood.

High above the Middle East, an Israeli jet refuels, ready for another operation.

This is the image the US and Israel want to project: of precision, of control.

But on the ground, it appears very different.

There are reports in the US that the use of ground troops is now being considered.

The Washington Post says they may attempt to take either Carg Island or launch coastal raids.

Responding on social media, the President simply said, "No, Trump is not losing his nerve on Iran." But the threat of ground forces is clearly being taken seriously.

The Speaker of Iran's Parliament told the state news agency, "The enemy openly sends messages of negotiation and secretly plans for a ground attack.

Our men are waiting to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever." And that punishment is already being felt.

This was Kuwait Airport yesterday, while the UAE said it suffered its heaviest attacks in weeks.

The news that the Houthis, an armed Yemeni faction aligned to Iran, have now joined the war opens a new front.

Our armed forces carried out the second military operation using a barrage of cruise missiles and drones, targeting several vital and military sites of the Zionist enemy in southern occupied Palestine.

The Houthis could threaten the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which has provided an alternate route for some Saudi oil.

If that were closed, the consequences for the global economy would be devastating.

Here in the UK, the government says this country can cope.

As you would expect, we will continue to keep under review all of the measures we currently have in place and if anything is needed in the future.

But your viewers should be reassured that where it comes to energy prices in terms of what they will be paying for domestic supplies, we are making sure that is capped until the end of June.

We've taken action to support consumers who require heating oil.

There are diplomatic efforts underway to bring this all to an end.

Talks are being held, but only involving Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey.

The US, Israel, and Iran are not taking part.

They all claim they are now winning this war, and no one looks ready to compromise.

Let's speak to Sasha Bruckmann, who's research fellow for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Sasha Bruckmann, thank you for talking to us.

I wonder, first of all, what your thoughts are one month into this war with no real end in sight.

Well, yes, it seems we have settled into a bit of a phase of stalemate.

It's not no longer the first or second round of this boxing match where everybody's trying to gather information about how the ferocity of each other and the constitution of the enemy.

But it now seems like both have kind of sized each other up, and

we're getting into a phase that seems a bit more slow, as in continuous attacks by the United States and Israel.

the Iranians have been able to retaliate or continue retaliation, albeit at a much lower level.

So when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says Iran's retaliation has dropped by 90% in terms of missile and UAV attacks, I think I can see something similar in the data.

But this is kind of the stalemate, where we are hundreds of sorties per day on the US-Israeli side, and

20, 30, 40 missiles maybe by the Iranians in retaliation.

So despite the bluster, despite the defiance I mean, absolute defiance that continues to come from Iran, the latest from the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament saying Iran is waiting for a ground attack by the US and will rain fire on any troops.

Despite all that, you think there is a military weakening of Iran behind that.

I mean, we have to disentangle what the military weakening means.

The missile and the UAV sorties have definitely gone down.

The Iranian Navy no longer exists de facto.

But its ground forces have been much less affected by the war thus far.

Now, I would never want to be at the receiving end of a US Marine Corps attack, whether that's an ACTF, a Marine Assault Force, or whether it's a MEW, what they're sending now, the Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The problem for the Iranians will be that an amphibious assault is hard to predict.

The Marines can come by a tilt-rotor helicopter they all space.

They can raid ashore with their amphibious vehicles or with small boats, or they could come into port.

They are very specifically configured for these functions, for these amphibious assaults.

And with the USS Tripoli and her group, with two other ships, the San Diego and the New Orleans, they're mobile.

So therefore, they hold an entire strip of coast at risk.

And on the other hand, you have the President or the establishment in Washington talking about Carg Island, but

there are other islands that could be at risk in this entire Iranian coastline.

So it's very hard for the Iranians actually to predict where the Americans will strike eventually.

And what do you read into that troop buildup that you have just described, that additional 3,000 or more troops arriving on the USS Tripoli just on Friday?

So yeah, I think the group has about 3,500 combined sailors and marines, I think 2,000, 2,500.

Often, we read 2,200 as given as the number of marines.

So you have Carg Island, which is a small island, but

it's strategically significant because the oil export infrastructure is located on the island.

And I think, as I said, Washington has floated this idea.

I'm not certain I cannot understand what the strategic advantage is to taking the oil export infrastructure because the Iranian ships have to pass the Strait of Hormuz and then go into the Indian Ocean.

They have to pass, literally, the American ships, for example, the Washington and its destroyers.

So if US wanted to seize, destroy, or stop Iranian oil exports, it could do so by attacking those ships in many ways, whether that's destroying or just halting them or sending teams on to board those ships.

So Carg Island is a bit of a question mark for me.

Not tactically, it's perfectly viable, but strategically.

I find the islands near the narrowest point of the Strait of Hormuz more interesting from a tactical point of view.

So to the west, you have Abu Musa and the greater Nassotunbe Islands, which are claimed by the United Arab Emirates, which could serve as observation posts to sort and filter because the Iranian troops stationed there could hail Bandar Abbas or Tehran and say, "This tanker is approaching.

Do we have an agreement with this country or with this shipping line?" And then further east, at the more narrow point, is Kisham Island and the island of Hormuz, after which the strait is named, which are military posts from which UAVs, for example, are fired.

So you have the observation, let's say, the intelligence and reconnaissance side, or the effectors from where the UAVs are being launched.

Those are, together with Hormuz, three strategic options.

And the fourth one is you could just sail the Tripoli up and down the coastline and see how the Iranians react.

Every bit of decision is intelligence, right?

All of that is being soaked up by US and Israeli intelligence and could then inform whatever course of action will be taken in the end.

Just give us, in a few words, if you like.

How effective do you think Iran's tactic, Iran's strategy of targeting its Gulf neighbours is proving to be in this war?

So effective on a strategic sense, it is not because I think it's actually influenced decision-making in the Gulf to distance themselves more from Iran, understandably so.

Tactically, operationally, it has not brought down any of the Gulf states, right?