Trump’s Iran War Would Not Be a One-Off Deal
President Donald Trump is considering joining the war that Israel started with Iran. Although his administration immediately downplayed its role in the Israeli surprise attack last week, Trump has gotten increasingly enthusiastic about the war, as U.S. military forces move into the region.
“I may do it, I may not do it,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
The decision is between Trump and the Israeli government alone—and not Congress or the American people—as Vice President J.D. Vance implied on Tuesday. And Trump may believe that a U.S. intervention would be a simple, short affair. According to The New York Times, he was swayed by Fox News coverage portraying Israeli successes in the first day of the war.
Supporters of U.S. involvement have been arguing that the U.S. only needs to strike Fordo, the underground nuclear facility that Israel cannot reach. And Trump may be under the impression that he can cleanly extricate U.S. forces if the war drags on, as he did in Yemen.
But Iran is not Yemen. It has the ability to kill American troops, which would make a quick exit from the war politically untenable. And a catastrophic Iranian collapse would likely lead to calls for even more, long-term intervention.
While Iran is limited in the damage it can do to Israel because of distance and layers of Israeli and American air defenses—which are both reportedly running low on ammunition—the U.S. military is a much more inviting target. U.S. intelligence knows that Iran has short-range missiles poised to hit U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf, according to The New York Times.
Iraqi guerrillas are also reportedly poised to attack American troops in Iraq (yes, they’re still there) in the event of a U.S. intervention. Ironically, the last ground war in Iraq was exactly what Trump ran against in 2016.
Of course, the United States could ultimately prevail in a total war. And that would still not be the end of it. Iran does not have a unified government-in-exile ready to take the reins after a forcible regime change. The situation would likely look like Iraq from 1991 to 2003 or Syria from 2011 to 2024, with the U.S. military playing permanent crisis management.
Israeli strategic doctrine, which has been
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