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← Israeli Press on US Ground Troops

JNS: "Put Boots on the Ground ... Pushing Inwards Toward Tehran"

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED for the text. JNS (Jewish News Syndicate), an English-language news service that covers Israel, published Joseph Puder's column "Trump has two options for dealing with Iran" on 7 September 2026, one week after the Jerusalem Post column sizing an American ground army at up to 1.5 million.

The argument​

Puder, founder of the Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel, starts where the other columns start: bombing has not brought down Iran's government. He points to World War II, when bombing alone did not defeat Britain or Germany, and to Israel's June 2025 strikes, which did not topple the regime.

He then offers the president two choices. The first is to accept Iran's terms for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which he treats as surrender. The second:

"Trump's second option is to put boots on the ground and overwhelm IRGC forces around the Strait of Hormuz while pushing inwards toward Tehran."

(JNS, 7 September 2026; article page). The IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is Iran's ideological armed force.

He adds that Trump would have to "unleash" Kurdish, Balochi, and Ahwazi militias and ask NATO allies other than Turkey to join; that US forces might not need to go farther than the oil provinces of Khuzestan and Bushehr; and that the choice could cost Republicans the midterm elections. He still calls it the choice that would define Trump's legacy.

The boots are American​

Puder does not propose Israeli boots. The ground force in his column is the one Trump commands. That matches the pattern across Israeli and pro-Israel outlets in 2026: the call is for American ground action, and Israel's contribution is air power, intelligence, and, where proposed, local militias (Israel Keeps Its Infantry Home).

The Jerusalem Post's Mark Lavie​

The same month, Military.com quoted another columnist on the Jerusalem Post's opinion pages, Mark Lavie, making the same point with contempt for the American hesitation:

"If the US is afraid of getting army boots dirty, or, more seriously, taking some casualties in a legitimate military operation, then its army is a waste of time and money."

(Military.com, 9 September 2026). "Taking some casualties" means American sons and daughters killed. The sentence treats their deaths as the price of an army worth its budget.

What such an army would take​

A veteran who ran his own terrain analysis in fall 2025 wrote that a successful invasion of Iran would need "Nearly 100% mobilization of the National Guard," Iraq as the main line of departure, and allies contributing "at least 4 manouvre brigades" (JimmyThomist on X, 28 March 2026). Analyst Policy Tensor concluded: "The US cannot occupy Iran even with a draft" (Policy Tensor on X, 18 March 2026). Puder's narrower version, stopping in the southwest oil provinces, is the war the Pentagon's own "weeks of ground operations" planning points toward: raids and seizures that begin small. See Kharg Island and the Uranium Raid.

Status: Joseph Puder is alive. Mark Lavie is alive. Donald Trump is alive.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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