Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 12, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Although the United States has been at war with Iran since late February, U.S. President Donald Trump has so far favored airstrikes and avoided a ground war. But early Friday afternoon, CNN's Zachary Cohen reported that Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had "made a secret, rushed visit to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Florida" in late May "to be briefed in person on plans for the military to send ground troops into Iran to forcibly seize its highly enriched uranium."
On X, Cohen reported that according to CNN sources, "Trump hit pause after being warned it would likely prompt severe Iranian retaliation, extending the war and plunging the global economy into further turmoil, the sources said. But the high-level and pressing nature of the briefings underscores how close the Trump administration came to greenlighting the high-risk ground operation, sources said."
Reporting for CNN, Cohen and his colleague Natasha Bertrand explained, "The briefings were so urgent and sensitive that they required Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to rush from a meeting of senior NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) officials in Brussels back across the Atlantic to Tampa, Florida, on May 19, the sources said. The high-level and pressing nature of the briefings underscores how close the administration came to greenlighting the high-risk ground operation, sources said."
According to Bertrand and Cohen, a Joint Staff spokesperson "declined to comment about the preparations for a potential operation."
Trump has not explicitly or publicly expressed interest in putting American "boots on the ground" in Iran, saying, at times, that he didn't think it would be necessary. But he hasn't totally ruled out the possibility either. And the CNN reporters stress that "the discussions around sending ground troops into Iran just last month show how close the U.S. has come to massive escalation of the conflict."
"Tehran has also been plotting an economic 'nuclear option' if negotiations with the U.S. fail and the war resumes, three people familiar with the matter told CNN: getting the Houthis, the Iranians' chief proxy force in Yemen, to close the Bab-al-Mandab strait — a key waterway and global trade chokepoint that has served as a shipping lifeline as the entrance to the Red Sea amid Iran's months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz," Bertrand and Cohen report. "A senior administration official responded to a request for comment from CNN on Friday with a list of terms that Iran had allegedly agreed to as part of negotiations, including that its nuclear material be destroyed and removed, its nuclear program dismantled, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a halt to Iran's funding of terrorist proxy groups — and only afterward would it get sanctions relief."