Kellogg Wants Ground Troops in Iran and a New Negotiating Team, as U.S. Strikes Hit Day Nine

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg says the war with Iran has entered a new phase, and he wants Washington to respond with a lot more than airpower.

Appearing Monday on Fox News's "America Reports," Kellogg laid out what he called five things the U.S. should be doing right now. First on the list: fire the current negotiating team.

"You do not have or need real estate guys to be talking about negotiation during the middle of a war," Kellogg said, arguing that any team sent back to the table needs to be, in his words, "a real hardcore" group built for wartime diplomacy, not deal-making outsiders.

Kellogg didn't stop at diplomacy. He said airpower alone won't finish the job, even though public patience with the conflict is fraying. His answer: ground troops, but limited ones.

"You're going to need ground troops to do something. That doesn't mean they go all the way to Tehran," Kellogg said. "You could take a couple key strategic targets, that gives the president leverage and controls their economy."

Seizing Iranian territory, even a handful of sites, is a different mission than airstrikes and would put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in this conflict. Kellogg framed it as leverage, not occupation, but any ground incursion carries risks of casualties, prolonged commitments, and retaliation that airstrikes don't carry in the same way.

Where things stand on the ground

The conflict is closing in on the five-month mark. American forces carried out nine straight days of strikes against Iranian targets through Sunday, and by Monday the campaign had stretched into a tenth consecutive day, according to The Hill's defense newsletter.

The human cost is mounting on the U.S. side too. The Pentagon on Monday named two American service members killed in an Iranian attack: 1st Lt. Tyler Feehan and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales. Officials said Gonzales died in action Friday and Feehan the following day, according to Matzav.com and confirmed in CBS News's reporting on the identifications.

Iran, for its part, is pointing to trouble in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed Monday that two oil tankers it labeled "deviant" exploded while moving through the strait, according to Iran's state-run Fars News Agency. The IRGC said the ships had tried to enter and exit the waterway on what it called an "unsafe route." That claim comes from Iranian state media and has not been independently verified by U.S. officials in the available reporting.

The political fallout

The war is also reshaping domestic politics. Daily Kos reported that the conflict keeps undercutting Republican midterm optimism, arguing that GOP hopes for an easier political environment have repeatedly been derailed by the war's persistence.

Military voices like Kellogg are pushing for a harder, more decisive posture, while polling cited in Fox News's own segment suggests American public support for the drawn-out fight is slipping. A ground deployment, even a limited one aimed at "a couple key strategic targets," would be a much bigger ask of a war-weary public than continued airstrikes.

The economic and diplomatic strain is piling up too. Rising oil and gasoline prices, rattled global markets, and friction with longtime allies have all followed the war's extension past the five-month mark, per the reporting synthesized from Matzav.com's account of the conflict's trajectory.

What's unresolved

Kellogg's call to replace the negotiating team is a pointed one. He didn't name individuals in the clip, but his "real estate guys" line is a clear jab at the professional background of at least some current U.S. negotiators. Whether the administration takes that advice, or sticks with its current team, remains an open question. So does whether the White House has any appetite for the ground deployment Kellogg is floating, given that no U.S. official has publicly endorsed sending troops to seize Iranian territory.

Strikes have now run ten straight days. Two more American deaths were confirmed Monday. Iran is claiming tanker incidents in the Strait of Hormuz