The Trump administration is contemplating another attack on a foreign adversary, using a familiar script. Once again, the president has assembled what he described as an “armada” of ships within striking distance of his potential target and has told a nation’s leaders to make a deal—or else. The administration has provided hints at its rationale for military action and indications of what it wants from a deal, which the leaders of the nation in Donald Trump’s sights have summarily rejected. And the president has again said that time is quickly running out.
Such presidential bluster might be dismissed as another example of Trump’s Art of the Deal diplomacy—making exaggerated threats in the hope of forcing a negotiated settlement. But given that less than a month ago, Trump delivered on similar threats by carrying out a stunning, high-risk assault that dragged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his palace to a New York prison, another military assault, this time on Iran, is very possible.
At least 11 U.S. naval ships were positioned around Venezuela when the United States struck. Now at least 10 are near Iran, including the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, which left the Asia-Pacific region two weeks ago and just arrived in the Middle East. Over the past 10 days, the U.S. has also moved aircraft, drones, and air-defense systems to the region, just as it did in the run-up to the attack on Venezuela. And like Maduro, Iran’s leaders are signaling that they won’t agree to terms that the president says will avert a strike, namely swearing off any future work on nuclear weapons. Trump officials have suggested they are considering several targets in Iran but have yet to define what victory would look like or what they plan to do if strikes were to cause the regime in Tehran to fall.
The Navy is “ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary,” Trump said on Truth Social on Wednesday. “Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal—NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS—one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!” He added: “The next attack will be far worse!”
The threat of military strikes on troublesome regimes has become a hallmark of Trump’s second term. The United States conducted a weekslong campaign targeting Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen last year, followed by targeted strikes on Iran’s nuclear program in June and this month’s raid targeting Maduro. If the U.S. attacks Iran, it would become the fifth country targeted since Christmas, joining Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, and Venezuela.
But another round of strikes on Iran—if Trump ultimately decides to act—would be different and might not deliver the kind of quick military success that the president favors. Tehran has the most advanced military capabilities among the countries that the U.S. has targeted, both in terms of its national military and via its proxies, which pose a threat to American allies in the region. Even if the U.S. wanted to replace the top leader in Iran, as it did in Venezuela, there is no clear successor. Iran is run by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who serves as the supreme religious and military leader.
The fall of the ayatollah could empower the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, a powerful branch of Iran’s security apparatus that operates independently of the nation’s armed forces. Although Trump’s recent threats have centered around nuclear talks, previous statements—as well as military planning—have suggested punishing the regime for its brutal repression of nationwide protests.
U.S. officials told us that targeting those responsible for the repression is under consideration. This could include the National Information Network—the country’s internet-and-tech agency, which imposed a dayslong internet blackout as security forces carried out massacres against protesters. (Elon Musk has offered his Starlink satellite service to Iranian protesters, but access has been limited.) Planners also have looked at targeting whatever remains of the country’s air-defense system, and its ballistic-missile program. Advisers have leaned heavily toward the use of cyberattacks to limit any risk posed to U.S. personnel or military assets. “Chaos and entropy are the only possible path,” one official told us.
What began as an outcry by the Iranian public over the country’s deepening economic crisis, including record-high inflation and the collapse of its currency, the rial, has culminated in the most widespread and deadly uprising since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The regime’s bloodthirsty tactics have testified to its growing desperation, and human-rights activist groups say that anywhere from 6,000 to 16,000 people have been killed.
Trump has repeatedly signaled his willingness to intervene in support of the protesters, telling them via social media nearly three weeks ago that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” But there was little he could do at the time: The U.S. military was stretched thin, with its most crucial defensive assets stationed in the Caribbean and Pacific. Since then, the protests have quieted because of the government’s repression, calling into question whether strikes now would reignite the protests and potentially force out the regime—or just intensify violence in Iran and deepen instability across the Middle East.
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Trump has demanded a resolution to the two countries’ long-standing disagreements about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The president said this week that Iran is interested in talks. But Iranian officials have publicly rejected making concessions, instead threatening a swift response to any U.S. attack.
“Our brave Armed Forces are prepared—with their fingers on the trigger—to immediately and powerfully respond to ANY aggression against our beloved land, air, and sea,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media Wednesday evening.
Diplomatic solutions remain possible. Araghchi arrived today in Turkey, which has acted in the past as an intermediary, to meet with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan.
The Iranian foreign minister’s bellicose words should not be considered mere rhetoric, Vali Nasr, a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told us.
Rather, Iran could be sending the message that it may conduct strikes far bigger than those it launched on an American base in Iraq following the 2020 U.S. assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite Quds Force. It may even go bigger than its retaliatory strikes on Israel after the June attack on its nuclear program.
“In the past, Iran has reacted to U.S. strikes symbolically. There is a chance that Iran will respond this time in a way that they haven’t before,” Nasr said. “They may decide to target U.S. troops or targets in the Gulf or global oil supply—something major. And if that happens, the U.S. could potentially be drawn into a much longer conflict with Iran.” That may be especially true if, weakened by the recent protests, Tehran sees strikes as an existential threat that demands a “Damn the torpedoes” response.
American partners in the Gulf that host U.S. military bases forbid the launching of strikes from inside their borders, so fighter jets or bombers would likely take off from faraway bases or naval ships. Several Gulf allies have warned that U.S. strikes could lead to regional instability and shocks to the global oil economy: The Houthis in Yemen said they would attack ships transiting the Red Sea. IRGC-backed groups in Iraq warned about war. And an online video purported to show members of Hezbollah vowing to fight should Iran come under attack.
“Neighboring countries are our friends, but if their soil, sky, or waters are used against Iran, they will be considered hostile,” Mohammad Akbarzadeh, political deputy of the IRGC naval forces, said, according to the Fars News Agency.
The question of what comes next hangs over any military operation. The Trump administration surprised Venezuela’s democratic opposition by working with Maduro’s lieutenants after the dictator’s capture, with the intention of facilitating a later political transition. Working with the remnants of the Iranian regime would be much more complex, given the Tehran government’s longevity, ideological hostility toward Washington, and hierarchies.
But Iran’s opposition movement is fragmented and, as one Trump-administration official told us, “can’t be in the same room, let alone agree who among them should lead.” The only thing it can agree on is that the clerics need to cede power to the people. Beyond this, its divisions along ideological lines—its movement including monarchists, secularists, ethnic autonomy movements, and militant organizations—are significant. The various factions come to the table with deep historical grievances and conflicting visions for a post-regime Iran.
Political pressure is also coming from Capitol Hill, where Republican legislators told Secretary of State Marco Rubio Wednesday that they are frustrated by the White House conducting major military operations without congressional consent—or even advance notification. During a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, described the January 3 assault on Venezuela as an act of war enabled by an “expansive notion of presidential power.” Although the administration argued that Maduro’s capture was a law-enforcement operation, making a similar case for striking a nuclear-powered adversary such as Iran would be hard.
Rubio told the committee that Iran “is probably weaker than it has ever been,” in large part because it is spending too much on weapons and proxies instead of fixing long-term economic problems. Iran’s currency this week dropped to a record low of 1,500,000 rials to the dollar. Yesterday, the European Union labeled the IRGC a terrorist organization in response to its crackdown on protesters.
But Rubio also appeared to signal an off-ramp from the prospect of military action, describing the U.S. buildup of ships, aircraft, and air defenses as a “preemptive defensive option” that was prudent to “prevent the attack against thousands of American servicemen and other facilities in the region and our allies.”
More telling, Rubio acknowledged that the U.S. has no clear succession plan for Iran should strikes tip an already weakened regime out of power. An arrangement like the one the U.S. has with Caracas, he suggested, would be much trickier to pull off.
Rubio told Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican: “That’s an open question.”
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