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."

During his first presidency, Donald Trump was a relentless critic of neoconservatives —arguing that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a total disaster. And his America First views, greatly influenced by paleoconservative Patrick Buchanan, were often described as "isolationist."

But Trump, since returning to the White House, has taken a much more interventionist turn — from the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro to pushing for the U.S. to buy Greenland (an idea that European leaders vehemently oppose) to calling for Canada to become "the 51st state." And Trump escalated his interventionism by going to war with Iran.

In an op-ed published by the conservative Washington Examiner on March 8, journalist Timothy P. Carney lays out some reasons why Republicans should proceed with caution when it comes to war.

"If we take conservatism to be a real habit of mind, grounded in insights and a sound anthropology," Carney writes, "then the full weight of conservatism comes down against regime changes and wars of choice…. Overthrowing the current order, even when that order is rife with problems, typically makes things worse. More broadly: Dramatic changes to complex systems always create unintended and unforeseen consequences, and those consequences are often very bad."

Carney continues, "This isn't merely a foreign policy view. This is something the conservative believes so deeply he may not say it out loud. It's why he's skeptical of grand new plans and revolutions, whether cultural, economic, or otherwise. It's not that we live in the best of all possible worlds, it's that we live in a world more complex than we can imagine. Our power of reason is awesome, but humans trying to rearrange civilization are like amateurs tinkering with a home's electrical system — there's a high risk of disaster."

Carney goes on to describe the "lessons" of the United States' "21st Century regime-change wars."

"In Afghanistan," Carney explains, "we very quickly dethroned the Taliban, and then sunk into a 20-year occupation that ended in a humiliating and deadly retreat in 2021….

We spent more than $9 billion to try and end narcotics trade and production in Afghanistan. This was a total failure. By 2018, Afghanistan was supplying more than 90 percent of the world's opium…. The Iraq War, likewise, was quickly declared a success."

Carney continues, "Our military demolished Iraq's, deposed Saddam Hussein, and soon arrested him. For a moment, we were, as the war's champions predicted, greeted as liberators. Mission Accomplished! But then things spiraled way down. The primary premise for the war, that Saddam was about to use 'weapons of mass destruction,' proved false. The government we stood up collapsed. Our efforts to import Madison democracy failed, and in the vacuum, terrorism blossomed and then spread throughout the region. Many experts argue that the war created ISIS, which then brought hell on the region for many years. Domestically, the war became incredibly unpopular, and led to the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 and Barack Obama's election in 2008. Iraq today is one of the worst places on the planet to live."

Many critics of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran — a combination of Democrats and Never Trump conservatives — are urging Congress to use the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to rein him in. Trump, they argue, had no business getting the United States into a war via executive order and not getting Congress' input — and the War Powers Resolution is a tool lawmakers need to be taking advantage of.

But former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on March 5, emphasizes that Congress has a "far more direct way" to "intervene" in the Iran conflict: "the power of the purse."

"Few in Washington are asking the most obvious question: What has this conflict already cost, and what will it ultimately cost the American taxpayer?," Harman explains. "Between the cost of deploying carrier strike groups and more than a hundred aircraft to the region, and the expenditure of hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles at roughly $2 million apiece, the price tag is reportedly about $1 billion per day. Reuters reported, this week, that the Pentagon is working on a supplemental budget request of around $50 billion focused on replacing weapons stocks."

The former House Democrat adds, "Congress should be preparing now to meet that moment, demanding a full accounting of costs and requiring the administration to define the mission's objectives and a plan to achieve them."

During her years in Congress, Harman, now 80, focused heavily on national security, serving on the House Intelligence Committee and chairing the Homeland Security Committee's Intelligence Subcommittee. Long before that, she was a counsel for the U.S. Defense Department under President Jimmy Carter.

"Both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were authorized by Congress," Harman notes, "though the intelligence on Iraq turned out to be deeply flawed…. According to Brown University's nonpartisan Costs of War project, the final bill for Iraq exceeded $2 trillion. Afghanistan cost another $2.3 trillion. Congress needs to confront Iran's costs now, keeping in mind that Iran is only the most immediate item on a much larger bill. In January, President Trump called for a 50 percent increase in the annual defense budget — from roughly $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion — the largest proposed single-year jump since the Korean War. Congress should not wave these numbers through. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise and support armies and to appropriate military funds."

In a bombshell moment at the end of the confirmation hearing for Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), it appeared he was caught in some potential resume padding that Democratic Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said he wanted to find out about.

Appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Mullin promoted work that he had done, claiming it was "classified" in conjunction with the Defense Department under a missionary program in Afghanistan.

"You stated your special assignments occurred intermittently between 2006 and 2011," Peters said. "My letter did not exclude official travel and it also give you explicit instructions for providing classified information, how we could do that, and do it in a way that protects the classified information. You did not provide any of that. Today is the first time I'm hearing about your classified activities from 2015 to 2016. Quite frankly, as we have these conversations, you have not been forthcoming with me and the committee."

"The story always seems to kind of change," Peters continued. "As you know, candor, honesty, transparency are absolutely critical to try to build trust as the secretary of Homeland Security. We have to clear this up. We feel pretty strongly we have to understand exactly what this is."

Peters then noted, "We've checked, and the SCIF is available," referring to a secure facility where officials can discuss and read classified information. "We would love to have you come into the SCIF and tell us exactly what you are talking about. That will put my colleagues' minds at peace. Would you be willing to tell us the classified activities you are talking about?" Peters asked.

Mullin refused.

"Sir, I think this committee made it clear with the paperwork they give me that I do not have to disclose my official travel. That was part of the documents," said Mullin. "It went over two or three times. I complied exactly with what the committee said. There is no area for mission work and mentorship that was a volunteer basis [that] I did on my own time. It was specific, over and over again, that you do not have to claim official travel."

In earlier comments, Mullin was asked about one of the trips to Afghanistan: "That was an official trip that is classified."

There appeared to be a discrepancy about what was missionary and what was "official."

"We want to know what this supposed classified work was. I have real questions about it. I asked the FBI yesterday and said, 'If someone had appeared in any classified document, any document, would that be in this report?' And they said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'I do not see anything for Sen. Mullin, why is that?' They said, 'Nothing showed up.' We queried the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and other intel folks. So, you are in no classified document the federal government has, according to the FBI. And yet you are telling us you did all this classified work."

"Sir, I didn't say 'all,'" Mullin argued. He claimed that he complied with everything the document said, insisting it was "official travel" and a "classified trip."

Paul chimed in, saying that he too asked the FBI about any "classified work" and the FBI told Paul Mullin would have a "separate folder."

"So, it's confusing to us because there may have been some papers that said your official trips were excluded," Paul said.

"I can cancel the vote tomorrow," Paul continued." I'm willing to have the vote, get this done and get it over with. Just to make clear — it does not sound like it is a secret you are too concerned about divulging."

"If you would spend one hour or 30 minutes and just tell the ranking member and the others, it would be private. It would get this over with," Paul suggested.

Mullin then said he had no problems as long as the senators could get "cleared."

"That would be on you. We're not going to try and figure out who the four people are and whether we can have access to it," Paul said as Mullin tried to speak over him. Paul ultimately concluded that it was something they should be able to discuss.

Mullin said he didn't have any authority to release the information. Mullin wouldn't even say who assigned him the program in the Senate because it too was classified.

President Donald Trump appeared to be in retreat after insulting NATO last week when he claimed it never came to the aid of the United States.

While at the World Economic Forum, Trump told Fox Business "We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines."

The Washington Post reported that King Charles III personally called Trump to school him on the only time Article V of NATO was invoked after the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Social media exploded with posts from the U.K., including Prince Harry and even the cat account for the Prime Minister's residence, about the lives lost. Harry, in particular, served as a helicopter pilot on the front lines. He wrote in a statement that he personally lost friends during the fighting that the U.K. did for the Americans in Afghanistan.

Trump backed down in his comments on Saturday by praising the U.K. forces as "among the greatest of all warriors.

“The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America!” Trump claimed.

The Sun reported on Sunday that King Charles' concerns were relayed to the White House. The report cited an unnamed source claiming he was "concerned" and "hurt" by Trump's comments, “whether inadvertent or not.”

The royals are slated to visit Trump in the spring as part of the U.S.'s 250th birthday celebrations.