President Trump told The Hill on Sunday that he will not rule out sending ground troops into Iran if Tehran refuses to come to the table. Asked directly whether a ground invasion was off the table, Trump offered a single word: "No."

The statement marks the most explicit escalation of military options the president has put forward since the U.S.-Israeli operation in Iran began. It arrived alongside a flurry of social media posts and interviews in which Trump laid out a Tuesday deadline for strikes on Iranian infrastructure if no deal materializes and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

Trump said that no infrastructure targets would be off the table if an agreement is not reached. In a separate comment, he put it bluntly: "There is a good chance, but if they don't make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there."

The Tuesday Deadline

Trump's Truth Social activity on Sunday removed any ambiguity about the timeline. He posted a cryptic message reading simply "Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time." A longer post spelled out what that clock is counting down to:

"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F—-n' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah."

The message is vintage Trump: provocative, unfiltered, and designed to leave no doubt about American resolve. The demand is straightforward. Open the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of critical infrastructure. There is no diplomatic euphemism to hide behind here, and that appears to be entirely the point.

Deal Talk on Multiple Fronts

Even as he escalated the threat, Trump signaled that he still expects diplomacy to win out. In an interview with Fox News's Trey Yingst on Sunday, he said he expects Iran to make a deal with the U.S. by Monday. In a separate sit-down with Axios the same day, he suggested a deal could come together by Tuesday, while continuing to threaten Tehran.

Trump has adamantly denied that the U.S.-Israeli operation in Iran will result in a long-term conflict. His allies and administration officials have described the engagement as "short-term." Last week, the president said the conflict would end within the next two to three weeks.

This is the pattern: maximum pressure paired with an open door. The rhetoric sounds like war. The strategy looks like negotiation conducted at a volume Tehran cannot ignore. Trump's framing on Sunday reinforced that duality:

"Normal people would make a deal. Smart people would make a deal. If they were smart they would make a deal."

The implication is clear. The alternative to a deal is not a stalemate. It is devastation.

Costs Already Mounting

The conflict has already exacted a real price. An F-15E Strike Eagle crewed by two U.S. service members was downed on Friday. One crew member was rescued by U.S. forces later that day. The search-and-rescue operation for the second officer continued until Sunday, when the officer was found. There is an ongoing military investigation that has preliminarily determined responsibility was on the U.S. side.

The loss of an aircraft and the days-long search for an American service member are sobering reminders that this is not an abstraction. These are real servicemen flying real missions in hostile airspace.

Meanwhile, a missile strike on the all-girls Iranian Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school killed at least 175 people, most of them children. The human toll on the ground is staggering and warrants sober acknowledgment regardless of one's position on the broader conflict.

The Polling and the Experts

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday found that 66 percent of Americans support the U.S. ending the conflict. That number reflects a public that is weary of Middle Eastern entanglements, a sentiment that has defined the populist right for a decade and that Trump himself rode to the presidency.

On Thursday, over 100 international law experts in the U.S. signed an open letter warning that Trump's threats of total destruction in Iran could constitute war crimes. The legal characterization is aggressive and politically loaded. International law experts issuing open letters about Republican presidents is not a new phenomenon. It is a reliable feature of any military action undertaken by an administration that the legal academy disapproves of. Whether their analysis carries weight in practice or simply functions as a credentialed protest is a distinction worth drawing.

What Comes Next

The calculus here is not complicated. Trump is betting that Iran's regime, staring down the systematic destruction of its power grid and transportation infrastructure, will choose survival over defiance. He has set a public deadline, named specific targets, and refused to take the most extreme option off the table. Every element of the strategy is designed to convince Tehran that the cost of refusal is higher than the cost of a deal.

Whether this produces an agreement by Monday, by Tuesday, or not at all will determine how the next chapter unfolds. The president has made his position unambiguous. The Strait opens, a deal gets done, or Tuesday evening becomes a very long night in Tehran.

Two things can be true at once: the strategic logic of maximum pressure is sound, and the stakes of miscalculation are enormous. American service members are already in harm's way. Children are already dead. The window for diplomacy is measured in hours now, not weeks. Trump has made clear he intends to use every one of those hours as leverage.