{"id":206077,"date":"2026-04-01T07:28:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/chatter-and-fear-about-us-military-draft-emerge-as-trumps-iran-war-drags-on-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T07:28:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:28:34","slug":"chatter-and-fear-about-us-military-draft-emerge-as-trumps-iran-war-drags-on-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/chatter-and-fear-about-us-military-draft-emerge-as-trumps-iran-war-drags-on-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatter and fear about US military draft emerge as Trump\u2019s Iran war drags on – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though the US is almost certainly not going to have a draft, media commentary and online anxiety have surfaced
Middle East crisis \u2013 live updates<\/a>
The United States is almost certainly not going to have a military draft to fight Iran. That hasn\u2019t stopped the chatter, and anxiety, across the country.
In recent weeks, Donald Trump has ordered a number of marines and army paratroopers to head to the Middle East, gesturing toward a possible ground war to reopen the strait of Hormuz or secure nuclear weapons material. The provocative military activity has led to speculative conversation<\/a> about what it would take to invade a country twice the population and three times the territory of Iraq.
The White House has done little to end the debate. On 8 March, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, chose \u2013 seemingly offhandedly \u2013 to respond to conservative journalist Maria Bartiromo\u2019s question about the possibility of a military draft in vague terms.
\u201cThe president, as commander-in-chief, wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. It\u2019s not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on table,\u201d Leavitt said on Fox News. \u201cThere\u2019s no greater priority or responsibility to this president than, of course, protecting the American people and protecting our troops.\u201d
Because her answer was not conclusive, commentary about a draft snowballed from there. News organizations like Task and Purpose, Yahoo<\/a> and USA Today<\/a> ran stories about how a draft would work.
Meanwhile, an influence operation by Iranian shill accounts began amplifying commentary critical of the war almost immediately after the first US strikes on Iran. Researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina tracked<\/a> the shift in the network of fake accounts.
Social media took note of a change to the Selective Service program instituted in the National Defense Authorization Act that Trump signed in December, which automates registration for Selective Service \u2013 a program through which the government maintains a list of those eligible in case a draft were reinstated. Clickbait accounts began headlining posts saying that young men had been \u201cautomatically drafted\u201d into service, but the change was simply administrative.
Americans also noticed that the US army revised its recruiting regulations on 20 March, raising the maximum enlistment age to 42 from 35 and scrapping some prior restrictions for those convicted of marijuana possession. The changes suggested to some that the military had a recruiting problem and that it changed the standards to address that issue. But the army met its 2025 recruiting goal of 61,000 new soldiers four months early.
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s a free country, they can talk about it all they want,\u201d said Lawrence Romo, a former director of the Selective Service System in the Obama administration. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s serious unless there\u2019s a long-term issue with not being able to recruit for the volunteer force in the long term, or we have a war where we have no choice, right?\u201d
Shortly after the US launched attacks on Iran, the South Park writer Toby Morton launched DraftBarronTrump.com, satirizing the president\u2019s willingness to send others into combat while his own family has assiduously avoided military service, including himself, obtaining draft deferments for bone spurs. It noted the president\u2019s assertion that his son was \u201ctoo tall\u201d to enlist. By 2 March, the hashtag #SendBarron was trending on X and TikTok.
And as draft talk populated social media, Politico asked California\u2019s governor, Gavin Newsom, about it. \u201cI think we have to look at ways we can frame a responsibility to serve for a year, six months minimum \u2013 year, 18 months,\u201d Newsom, a Democrat, said in a video interview published on 24 March. \u201cThis notion of shared experiences \u2013 I don\u2019t know how else you get this country back together.\u201d
Newsom never served in the military. Neither did the actor and comedian Rob Schneider, whose post on X calling for every American to \u201cserve two years of military service\u201d at 18, with a choice to \u201cserve part of that time overseas or in a country in a volunteer capacity\u201d earlier this week has drawn outsized attention.
But there is political liability for Trump in even the conversation around a draft. During the 2024 campaign, Trump sharply rejected the idea of a draft.
\u201cThe Fake News Washington Post came up with the ridiculous idea that Donald J. Trump will call for Mandatory Military Service,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a> on Truth Social in a 11 June 2024 post questioning comments made to the Washington Post by Christopher Miller, who led the Department of Defense after Mike Esper\u2019s departure after the 2020 election.
\u201cThe Story is completely untrue. In fact, I never even thought of that idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though the US is almost certainly not going to have a draft, media commentary and online anxiety have surfacedMiddle East crisis \u2013 live updatesThe United States is almost certainly not going to have a military draft to fight Iran. That hasn\u2019t stopped the chatter, and anxiety, across the country.In recent weeks, Donald Trump has ordered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-206077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}