Once again, an American president is pushed – by events, by the fear of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and by the need to support his own statements – towards a shocking entry into a conflict in the Middle East, without a guaranteed way out.
Donald Trump is facing a crucial decision, torn between external pressures and his own beliefs and ambitions.
In Washington, expectations are rising that Donald Trump will soon heed Israeli calls to deliver a decisive blow to Iran's nuclear program, using weapons capable of destroying bunkers and possessed exclusively by the US.
According to CNN reports, Trump was more enthusiastic on Tuesday about the idea of using American military resources to attack Iranian nuclear sites and regretted the previous unsuccessful attempt to resolve the issue through discussions with Iran.
As always in Trump's case, we must, however, question whether his tough rhetoric is serious. Perhaps he is trying to convince Iran to return to diplomacy and to the "unconditional surrender" he demanded on social media, although such a thing seems like a utopia now, as emphasized by CNN.
"As long as President Trump tries to take advantage of Israeli aggression against Iran to force the Iranian leadership to surrender, it simply won't work. What they see at the end of this slippery slope is essentially total surrender and the collapse of the regime," said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.
And since Israel's preemptive attack on Iran seems partially motivated by the desire to influence American diplomacy, who can say that a president who was recently ignored by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping could stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
However, Trump may be on the brink of a huge gamble that would repudiate his own political principles.
If he goes to war in Iran, Trump will ignore a noisy sector of his MAGA movement. The "America First" president would become the kind of interventionist he himself despised.
Yet, there is a gap in Trump's isolationism - he has always insisted that Iran, given its threats to eradicate Israel and hostility towards the US, will never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. Now he has the opportunity to eliminate this threat.
"The Sins" from America's History: Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam
Trump is considering whether to use 13,600 kg Massive Ordnance Penetrator guided bombs to destroy Iran's Fordow nuclear facility, buried under several hundred meters of concrete in a mountain.
But something important is missing: any public discussion from senior officials about what might happen next. It is an extraordinary omission, considering Washington's unfortunate adventures in the 21st century, when it started wars and spent most of the last 20 years trying to get out of them, notes the American television station.
"Anyone encouraging the United States to go to war with Iran has quickly forgotten the disasters of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Senator Chris Murphy on Tuesday. The Connecticut Democrat reminded that those conflicts "became a quagmire that ultimately led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and created new insurgencies against US interests and our allies in the region."
Here's a brief overview:
- The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and quickly toppled dictator Saddam Hussein. But they collapsed the Iraqi state and triggered a violent insurgency that ultimately ended with the defeat of the US. Fragile stability has only recently returned to Iraq after more than two decades.
- In Afghanistan, President George W. Bush's post-9/11 invasion drove out the Taliban leaders who harbored Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group. However, two decades of nation-building led to a humiliating US withdrawal in 2021, shattering then-President Joe Biden's claims to be a foreign affairs guru.
- President Barack Obama had his own disaster. He was persuaded by European allies and some of his own advisers to oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to protect civilians in 2011. "We came, we saw, he died," then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview. US arrogance towards Libya has long faded, but remains dangerous, notes the TV station.
Not to mention the older "sins" of America - the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia being the most painful.
Obviously, Trump knows all this. The moment it became clear he would forever change the Republican Party was when he harshly criticized his primary election rival, Jeb Bush, in a 2016 debate about his brother's wars, George W. Bush. "The Iraq War was a big mistake," Trump said back then.
And he hasn't forgotten. He reminded the world of this just last month in a significant speech delivered in Saudi Arabia. "The so-called nation-builders have destroyed far more peoples than they've built, and the interventionists intervened in complex societies they didn't even understand. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves," Trump stated.
Will the American president himself now become an interventionist? We will find out in these days.
What Iran Does Matters Enormously
Iran is not Libya, Iraq, or Afghanistan. History doesn't have to repeat itself.
Perhaps the Republican "hawks" are right this time when they say that a devastating and controlled American military attack can destroy Iran's nuclear program and eliminate an existential threat to Israel and a national security risk to the United States.
However, the Iranian regime would almost certainly need to respond, if only to maintain its authority. Depending on the military capacity left after the Israeli attack, it could target American personnel and bases in the region. Trump would have to respond in an escalation cycle without a clear end goal.
Nightmare scenarios are easy to imagine, CNN emphasizes. Iran could close the Hormuz Strait to block the flow of oil and trigger a global energy crisis.
Or it could target the oil fields of its regional rivals, such as Saudi Arabia.
Only one nation could lead a response: the United States, which would be further drawn into a regional war.
Furthermore, there is the possibility of large-scale Iranian cyber-attacks, which could bring the war to US soil.
We also wonder how the US and Israel governments could secure the stockpiles of nuclear materials left exposed following raids on Iranian nuclear plants, so they don't fall into the hands of terrorists or enemy states.
History, both current and distant, argues against the idea that a joint US and Israel effort would be short and conclusive.
Israel has not yet eradicated Hamas, despite years of bombardments in Gaza, which have taken a terrible toll on tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Iran is likely a greater challenge.
And US efforts to shape Iran - including a CIA-backed coup in 1953 in support of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, leading to the Islamic revolution, and Washington's support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s - have almost always worsened the situation.
"In many people's minds, it will be Iraq in 2003. Weapons of mass destruction that, of course, turned out not to exist. To this day, this darkens George W. Bush's legacy - and this will not go unnoticed by Donald Trump," believes James Matthews, Sky News correspondent.
In these conditions, why did Trump, it seems, give up his previous reluctance towards foreign wars?
Factors That Could Push Trump Towards an Attack
If he greenlights an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump could find himself in a situation any president could have faced.
All of his recent predecessors warned that Iran would never be allowed to get the bomb - though Trump could be accused of failing to prevent this during his tenure, CNN explains.
But if Israel's warnings that Tehran was rapidly heading towards a nuclear weapon were correct, no American president could have stood aside and risked a second Holocaust.
It is probably no coincidence that Trump's thinking has evolved, given the apparent success of the initial Israeli operations.
However, he is a problematic leader and has done nothing to prepare the country for a possible new foray into a distant region, which would mean American bloodshed.
And Trump's strategy of governing through division could now deprive him of the bipartisan public trust that all war presidents need to succeed.
Suddenly, a man who prided himself on being a "peacemaker" and vowed never to start new wars has reached a point where even his predecessors found themselves.
He is a president now debating whether to send Americans into a new conflict in the Middle East, based on possibly questionable information about weapons of mass destruction.
T.D.