WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has privately expressed serious interest in deploying U.S. troops on the ground inside of Iran, according to two U.S. officials, a former U.S. official and another person with knowledge of the conversations.

Trump has discussed the idea of deploying ground troops with aides and Republican officials outside the White House while outlining his vision for a post-war Iran in which Iran’s uranium is secure and the U.S. and a new Iranian regime cooperate on oil production similar to how the U.S. and Venezuela are, the sources said.

The president’s comments expressing serious interest in deploying ground troops have not focused on a large-scale ground invasion of Iran, but rather on the idea of a small contingent of U.S. troops that would be used for specific strategic purposes, the U.S. officials, the former U.S. official and the person with knowledge of the discussions said. They said Trump has not made any decisions or given any orders related to ground troops.

“This story is based on assumptions from anonymous sources who are not part of the President’s national security team and are clearly not read into these discussions,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump always, wisely keeps all options open, but anyone trying to insinuate he is in favor of one option or another proves they have no real seat at the table.”

Publicly, Trump has not ruled out putting U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iran, though the war has so far consisted only of an air campaign. His private discussions about the idea show a president perhaps more willing to consider taking such a step than his public comments on the issue so far have suggested. Any deployment of American troops inside of Iran could increase the scale and scope of the war — and escalate the risks to American forces.

Since the war began on Saturday, six U.S. troops have been killed and 18 wounded in counter attacks from Iran, according to the Pentagon.

Trump has privately described to aides and Republican officials outside the White House that his ideal outcome in Iran as one like the emerging dynamic between the U.S. and Venezuela since American special forces captured Nicolas Maduro in January, the current U.S. officials and former U.S. official said. In post-Maduro Venezuela, the U.S. backed a new president, Delcy Rodríguez, under the condition that she implement policies that Trump views as favorable to the U.S., including that the U.S. benefits from Venezuela’s oil production.

The president said in an interview with the New York Post this week, “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” He said while other presidents have ruled out boots on the ground, “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

Foreign policy experts offered various scenarios in which the president might choose to deploy U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.

“You could envision them doing some sort of special operations insertions if there were targets that they absolutely needed to take out or reduce but didn’t lend themselves to bombardment,” said Joel Rayburn, a former Trump administration official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “That’s the kind of thing where you do an insertion, you attack a target, or conduct a raid, and then you get out.”

But Rayburn said such a scenario is very different from what most Americans imagine when they think about deploying ground troops or putting “boots on the ground,” and that he had so far not seen the conditions emerging that would require that step.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, the Iran program senior director at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in the event of collapse of the Iranian regime U.S. forces could be used on the ground there to try to help facilitate a dynamic between the U.S. and Iran that mirrors Venezuela or to help keep track Iran’s uranium stockpile, which is believed to be entombed beneath some of its nuclear sites.

“You don’t want it to become a failed state nuclear bazaar,” Taleblu said of Iran.

Nate Swanson, a senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C., said the U.S. could rethink its military options if Iran “thinks it can win a war of attrition.” Such as scenario could lead the president to deploy ground forces into Iran or arm opponents of the Iranian regime. Trump is considering whether to arm opponents of the regime.

In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump suggested he is not seriously considering a ground invasion of Iran at this time. He said he wants new leadership in Iran that he approves of and has said he expects the war, which began Saturday, to last four to five weeks while leaving open the possibility of it continuing indefinitely.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday that U.S. ground troops is an option that remains on the table for the president although “not part of the plan for this operation time.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Thursday that Iran is prepared for U.S. ground troops. “We are waiting for them,” Araghchi said, adding that “we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.” “We have prepared ourselves to confront with any scenario,” Araghchi said.