It has been roughly a week since Israel launched its first air, drone, and special operations attacks on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Israel’s offensive, launched with the initially stated goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, quickly evolved into an effort at regime destruction and replacement. In the fog of war, which spans from Tehran to the Oval Office, the Trump administration’s complicity and knowledge of the attack remain unknown. What is known, however, is that Israel’s actions have thrown into irreconcilable tension Trump’s two goals in the Middle East: depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon and avoiding open-ended conflict.
President Trump’s interventionist supporters are apt to point out that he has been consistent in his stance that Iran cannot be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. Apparently lost on these neoconservative commentators is Trump’s consistently declared desire to end America’s forever wars, his routine condemnation of the nation-building project, and explicit denial of any desire to do so in Iran. Until a week ago, these two goals were not in tension as talks between the United States and Iran appeared productive.
But now, with Israel’s war on Iran, Trump’s stated policy preferences are clearly at odds, with interventionists now advocating for the United States to enter the war, either through “limited” strikes aimed at denuclearization or full-blown regime change. But to exercise either of those options would embroil his country in another Middle Eastern quagmire, unravel Trump’s coalition, and create more geopolitical problems than it would solve.
Some supporters of escalation, while publicly eschewing the idea of regime change, nevertheless support the idea of “limited” US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. Proponents of such a scheme compare the concept to that of Trump’s drone strike on Qasem Soleimani, a limited option that would yield significant benefits against comparatively little risk. One such supporter confidently quipped that “Trump vaporized Soleimani and then walked away. He can do it again here.”
This conflation constitutes magical thinking. Soleimani, while an essential figure within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was nonetheless a single man. He was also a liminal figure whose role blurred the lines between a state and a non-state actor. His assassination, aided by the IRGC designation as a terrorist organization, also provided a legal pretext, however flimsy. Furthermore, his killing in Iraq and the precision of the strike worked to limit the chance for blowback. None of these aspects would carry over to a potential US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, an action that would, by any reasonable definition, constitute an act of war.
There is also no guarantee that such strikes would succeed, at least not to the extent that they would outweigh the accompanying risks. Despite the views of airpower fetishists, air strikes alone would likely not be enough to destroy hardened facilities like the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. Even supporters of such an option concede that the vaunted GBU-57 may be insufficient to eliminate the hardened Fordow facility. Such strikes on high-value targets would demand bomb damage assessments (BDA) performed by troops on the ground, likely in the form of an Israeli raid. Airpower, then, is not some magic talisman to achieve maximum effect with minimal risk.
Furthermore, strikes on hardened facilities, as tricky as they are, are but one issue; eliminating the scientific knowledge associated with nuclear technology is another. While, indeed, Israel has for years assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists, such efforts would need to remain active in perpetuity. Both of these hurdles, the tactical issues of destroying facilities and the strategic difficulty of degrading knowledge, undermine the fantasy that attacking Iran’s nuclear program can be “limited” in any sense of the word.
Beyond these material considerations, there is another, more perilous problem: Iran’s response to an overt act of war. Iran would assuredly view American attacks on their nuclear program as an assault on the regime itself, one that would undermine their legitimacy and would respond accordingly. Indeed, Iran’s supreme leader promised that “irreparable damage” would be visited upon US forces should they intervene in the war. While such threats are emanating from a severely weakened regime, they should not be taken lightly. American forces, scattered throughout the region, would present ample targets for Iran’s conventional weapons and proxy forces. What is more, while Israel has devastated Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, air defense, and command and control, the Islamic Republic’s army and navy remain comparatively untouched.
Therefore, even a “limited” strike on Iran’s nuclear program would quickly escalate into a general conflict. American entry into this war, even in a comparatively measured fashion, would nevertheless put the country on a glide path toward a more ambitious mission, one supported by key Republican politicians and Benjamin Netanyahu: regime change in Iran.
Entry into this war would scuttle Trump’s presidency and coalition. Despite hawkish claims to the contrary, reliable polling and other metrics strongly suggest shallow support for such an action. A recent YouGov poll found that even a majority of Republicans opposed military action, with only 19 percent supporting military intervention. Similarly, YouGov found that only 14 percent of Americans believed that Israel’s attacks on Iran would make the US safer. These polls are in line with earlier trends, which showed that young Republicans (like younger Americans generally) displayed a decreased level of support for Israel.
And, despite the claims of neoconservative supporters for intervention, the Republican base has displayed a lack of enthusiasm for open-ended, poorly defined proxy wars. This opposition is not merely dispersed in the electorate but is being voiced by MAGA stalwarts like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and Charlie Kirk, to name a few. Whatever appetite there is for this war comes from the establishment Republican Party — namely, Senate leadership and the media orbit of legacy outlets like Fox News.
Entering this conflict would undermine one of President Trump’s key campaign promises and his own metric of presidential success, as outlined in his second inaugural address. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” Currently, the United States is not an active belligerent in this war. If that changes, then by his own standards, the Trump administration can be accurately judged as a failure.