Summary

The United States is almost certainly not going to have a military draft to fight Iran. That hasn’t 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 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, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt chose – seemingly offhandedly – to respond to conservative journalist Maria Bartiromo’s question about the possibility of a military draft in vague terms. “The president, as commander in chief, wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. It’s not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on table,” Leavitt said on Fox News. “There’s no greater priority or responsibility to this president than, of course, protecting the American people and protecting our troops.” Because her answer was not conclusive, commentary about a draft snowballed from there. News organizations like Task and Purpose, Yahoo and USA Today 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 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 – 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 “automatically drafted” 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 has 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. “I mean, it’s a free country, they can talk about it all they want,” said Lawrence Romo, a former director of the Selective Service System in the Obama administration. “But I don’t think it’s serious unless there’s 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?” Shortly after the US launched attacks on Iran, South Park writer Toby Morton launched DraftBarronTrump.com, satirizing the president’s 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’s assertion that his son was “too tall” to enlist. By 2 March, the hashtag #SendBarron was trending on X and TikTok. And as draft talk populated social media, Politico asked California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, about it. “I think we have to look at ways we can frame a responsibility to serve for a year, six months minimum – year, 18 months,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a video interview published 24 March. “This notion of shared experiences – I don’t know how else you get this country back together.” Newsom never served in the military. Neither did actor and comedian Rob Schneider, whose post on X calling for every American to “serve two years of military service” at 18, with a choice to “serve part of that time overseas or in a country in a volunteer capacity” 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. “The Fake News Washington Post came up with the ridiculous idea that Donald J. Trump will call for Mandatory Military Service,” Trump wrote 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’s departure after the 2020 election. “The Story is completely untrue. In fact, I never even thought of that idea.”