The spectacle in America this week was grimly familiar. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, bearing not gifts but a request for war. Even before the meeting began, Netanyahu received what he sought from the trip—an American green light. When asked whether he would “allow” Israel to attack Iran if Tehran rebuilds its nuclear program or ballistic missiles, President Donald Trump answered, “with the missiles, yes. The nuclear, fast.”
Trump’s pronouncement has set off a scramble in Washington to decipher what, exactly, the president just committed the United States to. Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute wondered, will the U.S. be a direct participant in offensive strikes against Iran, or “only” serve as Israel’s defensive shield, consuming American interceptors to shoot down Iran’s retaliatory strikes?
Curt Mills of The American Conservative cuts to the core of the peril, noting that if “Iranian ballistic missiles are Trump’s red line,” then logically, “we are going to war tonight.” The question is whether the president understands the implications of the assent he gave.
Going after Iran’s ballistic missiles, rather than its nuclear energy program, is not a minor tactical shift. It is a strategic catastrophe in the making, a dramatic and dangerous shifting of the goalposts that betrays the “America First” mandate and risks entangling the United States in an endless, unwinnable conflict.
Let us be clear about the stakes. For Tehran, its ballistic missile arsenal is not merely a weapon system; it is the non-negotiable foundation of its national defense. This doctrine of missile-based deterrence was forged in the crucible of the devastating 1980s war with Iraq, an experience that taught Iran it could not rely on any external security guarantor. Self-help became its core strategic principle.
Today, this reliance has become existential. Israel’s relentless campaign since the October 7th Hamas attack has systematically degraded Iran’s “forward defense”—its network of allies and proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Assad regime in Syria—that once provided deterrence. When Israel struck Iran directly in the June war, it was Iran’s own missiles that provided the decisive response. In the eyes of the Iranian leadership, these weapons are what prevented their nation from becoming a second Syria—a state so hollowed out it could be bombed and occupied at will.
It is, therefore, unthinkable for Iran to compromise on its missile arsenal. Which is, of course, the reason why Israel wants Trump to demand its elimination and promise war if Tehran doesn’t acquiesce.
But though they are worrisome for Jerusalem, Iranian missiles have never been a red line for Washington. During the first half of 2025, the U.S. and Iran were engaged in talks over Tehran’s nuclear program. The talks reached a dead-end when Washington changed its own red line—no weaponization of Iran’s program—to Israel’s —no uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.
The U.S. then joined Israeli strikes on Iran by targeting Tehran’s key nuclear facilities including the main one at Fordow, after which Trump declared Iran’s nuclear program fully obliterated. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has said that enrichment activity is no longer taking place in Iran.
An agreement with Tehran that recognized its enrichment rights, under a tight international verification regime, would have been far preferable to strikes, but if Washington’s goal was no enrichment, then the degradation of Iran’s nuclear energy program should have been recognized as a tangible win.
A prudent leader would pocket this victory, declare the core threat eliminated, and walk away. Even Trump’s envoy to the United Nations, Morgan Ortagus, addressing the Iranian ambassador a few days ago, extended the U.S. hand, citing only non-enrichment as Washington’s core principle and opening an opportunity for dialogue. She did not say anything about the missiles. But now, Trump appears ready to let Netanyahu draw himself and the U.S. into a new, far more perilous fight over an issue of no security concern to the U.S.
Crucially, this public “green light” may already have triggered a chain reaction. In Tehran, the leadership faces severe domestic criticism for its perceived weakness and failure to respond decisively to Israel’s previous attacks against its regional allies and on its own territory, such as the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Many believe this restraint eroded the nation’s deterrence and paved the way for Israel’s direct attack on Iran.
This context makes the recent statement by Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, not a generic boast but a potential threat:
Under Iran’s defense doctrine, responses are set before threats materialize. Iran’s missile capability and defense are not containable or permission-based. Any aggression will face an immediate harsh response beyond its planners’ imagination.
The threat is framed in defensive terms, but an Iranian preemptive strike can not be entirely ruled out. For a security establishment humbled now facing down yet another authorized U.S.–Israeli campaign to dismantle its last line of national defense, striking first might look appealing. It has an element of surprise and forces its own terms on the adversary rather than merely reacting. Iranians will not wait to see their missile arsenal—the final pillar of their deterrence—systematically destroyed.
It does not mean that a preventive or preemptive Iranian strike is inevitable or even likely. But Iranian leaders are under immense pressure to never be caught flat-footed again. And by shifting the goalposts and openly planning for this next war, Washington and Jerusalem have contributed to making a preventive missile barrage against Israel look like a rational, devastating, option from Tehran’s perspective. The United States, by authorizing Israeli strikes, will likely find itself in the crosshairs.
Whether Israel or Iran strikes first, this will be America’s war—a direct, open-ended conflict with a nation that has tried to avoid one. The nuclear program was a contained problem: a small number of known, fixed facilities. The missile program is diffuse—a vast network of production sites, storage tunnels, and mobile launchers scattered across a country four times the size of Iraq. There is no “surgical strike” option here, only a campaign of attrition, guaranteeing a massive Iranian response and locking the U.S. into another long war in the Middle East.
This would be the ultimate betrayal of the president’s core promise to his base to end forever wars, rather than starting new ones. Yet Trump is already on that ruinous trajectory by striking Iran in June and this month striking a Venezuelan dock in the first known land strike on that country. Launching another major war in the Middle East, at the direct behest of a foreign government, would not just violate that pledge; it would risk a catastrophic collapse of his presidency and movement.
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