Here we go again.
President Donald Trump says he wants to make a deal with Iran and avoid war. And he’s sending negotiators to Oman for talks with Iranian diplomats on Friday. Sound familiar?
Ahead of scheduled U.S.–Iranian talks in Oman last June, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, instigating a war that Trump later briefly joined with a bombing raid on Tehran’s main nuclear facilities.
Not quite seven months later, the world anxiously waits to see if recent history will repeat itself, this time with America leading the charge.
Israel, of course, is worried that Trump won’t attack. “It’s really the Israelis who want a strike,” a U.S. official told Axios. “The president is just not there.” If Trump strikes Iran rather than negotiating a deal, that will mean Israel got its way.
If you pay close attention to Mideast issues—or if you’re just a sentient human being—the Axios reporting should come as no surprise. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing a U.S. war on Iran for decades, and until Trump’s second term, American presidents had told him thanks, but no thanks.
But even Trump didn’t give Netanyahu everything he wanted in June, authorizing a highly limited attack and then getting Iran and Israel to cease-fire.
It could’ve been worse, much worse—and it likely will be if Trump strikes again. This time, judging from the buildup of assets in the Persian Gulf region, the Trump administration appears to be planning large-scale strikes. Moreover, experts have assessed for months that the Iranian government sees a need to hit back harder if the U.S. and Israel attack again, to restore deterrence. It looks like the experts are right. “They should know that if they start a war this time, it will be a regional war,” Iran’s supreme leader said on Sunday.
Sounds bad, but you can’t exactly blame Tehran for threatening to set the Middle East ablaze. Trump has demonstrated a strong preference for military action to be quick and achieve specific objectives so he can avoid American casualties and long, chaotic wars. The Iranians know this, and their provocative rhetoric is meant to prevent another attack on their country, not to antagonize Washington.
But Tehran’s threats are credible. Iran has ramped up its manufacture of ballistic missiles since the June war (though questions persist about how many missile launchers are ready to fire them). And the Islamic Republic may have no choice but to assume that any future attack poses an existential threat, given the escalating rhetorical belligerence of Israel and its American supporters.
As Tehran suppressed mass protests last month, pro-Israel voices like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) intensified their pressure on Trump to topple the Iranian regime. “Make Iran Great Again,” became a favorite catchphrase of Graham, who never misses a chance to coopt the MAGA movement. The president seemed on the verge of giving the war hawks what they wanted, but he pulled back.
Trump judged that the U.S. military wasn’t prepared to intercept large-scale retaliation against Israel, Arab partners, and American forces in the region. So he sent an “armada” to the Middle East, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group. But by the time the assets arrived, Iran had squashed the protests, and it was even less clear than before what U.S. strikes could achieve.
Trump had another good reason to think twice: Striking Iran doesn’t pass the cost–benefit test for America. Simply put, the American people don’t stand to benefit from another war of choice in the Middle East, and the Iraq War showed how costly such a war can be.
The Iranian opposition too is unlikely to benefit from U.S. strikes. “Another Israeli or U.S. attack out of the blue risks helping the Iranian regime politically by enabling it to appeal to patriotic and nationalist sentiment,” writes Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, in Responsible Statecraft. A war on Iran could also harm the protesters by, well, killing a lot of them and unleashing mayhem.
There’s no way around it: The looming U.S. war on Iran, if it occurs, probably won’t serve the interests of America or anti-government Iranians. But it would serve the interests of Israel.
Like America, Israel wants to prevent the Islamic Republic from developing nuclear weapons, but it perceives an additional interest: regime change or state collapse in Iran. American interests can be achieved via diplomacy—and indeed were achieved under the Iran nuclear deal that Trump exited in 2018—but Israel sees U.S. diplomacy with Iran as threatening.
The divergence of interests makes sense. Just look at a map and any list ranking the world powers. A middle power on the other side of the world, Iran poses no military threat to America; for Israel, it’s the chief adversary. And Netanyahu tends to trust only one tool for dealing with regional foes: brute force.
But Iran’s too big a dog for Israel to put down without help from its superpower patron. A lot of help. Israel would have suffered catastrophic damage last June had the U.S. not shielded it from Iranian missiles, and a successful regime change would require America to do the heavy lifting.
Trump’s limited strikes on Iran were a poor alternative to negotiations, but at least they targeted Tehran’s nuclear program rather than its regime. Similarly, his military raid in Venezuela last month achieved U.S. interests, albeit ones that diplomacy could have achieved with less risk. And while I oppose Trump’s push to acquire Greenland, I concede that doing so would bring strategic benefits for America (though outweighed, in my analysis, by the costs).
But an attack on Iran’s regime is a very different animal. Trump faces a clear choice: Launch another war for Israel or make peace for America. His choice is a test case for commentators trying to make sense of this administration: Does Trump’s Iran policy serve America or a foreign nation?
I predict Trump attacks by mid-February. I hope he proves me wrong.
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