As the war in Iran has entered its second month with no negotiations yet scheduled between the major combatants, President Trump is facing several interlocking decisions that will determine how long American forces will stay engaged in the battle, and with what kind of risks..
The most pressing choice seems to be whether he should narrow his war aims in hopes of pushing through a negotiated settlement with a new crop of Iranian leaders. Talking to reporters on Sunday night aboard Air Force One, Mr. Trump called the Iranian leadership “a whole different group of people” who have “been very reasonable.” (His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was significantly more skeptical.) Deal-making, as Mr. Trump knows, requires give-and-take — although he generally dislikes being seen as giving an inch.
But if the Iranians continue to rebuff him, claiming as they did on Monday that there is nothing to talk about until the United States and Israel stop bombing Iranian territory, he has different choices to make.
With more than 4,000 Marines and the 82nd Airborne Division about to arrive in the region, Mr. Trump can put muscle behind his threat to take Kharg Island’s oil-exporting facilities, free the Strait of Hormuz and perhaps seize Iran’s cache of near-bomb-grade nuclear material.
But the risks of all three steps are enormous. Even Mr. Trump admitted on Sunday that if he sent troops to seize Kharg Island, keeping it operating would require the U.S. military “to be there for a while.” The same goes for opening the strait, which the Iranians now say is their sovereign territory — and that ships wanting to pass will have to pay the multimillion-dollar tolls they have begun to impose.
Control of the strait was not even an issue four weeks ago, when the war started. But Iran’s assertion of control over traffic has so disrupted the global trading system that it looms large in any discussion of how the conflict gets resolved.
“The strait will reopen either with Iran’s consent or through an international coalition including the U.S.,” Mr. Rubio said on Monday.
If getting it reopened fails, Mr. Trump added on his social media account, “we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island, (and possibly all desalination plants!)”
Setting aside for a moment that such attacks against civilian infrastructure would almost certainly constitute a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Trump knows that Iran could strike back against similar facilities in the Persian Gulf, with its dwindling fleet of drones and medium-range missiles.
“The Iranians have achieved mutual assured destruction without a nuclear weapon,” said Robert S. Litwak, a scholar at George Washington University who has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear program. “If Trump attacks Iran’s civil infrastructure, Iran will destroy the comparable energy and desalination facilities in the Gulf.”
At the heart of Mr. Trump’s strategic dilemma is the fact that even after striking 11,000 targets, he has yet to achieve the kind of political changes in Iran that he talked about on Feb. 28, as the operation began. Of course, he still has time: He predicted a war that would last four to six weeks, and there are nearly two weeks left on that clock.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday that “the four-to-six-week timeline does remain.”
If it takes longer, as most senior officials now concede it may, they think they have the political leeway to buy more time.
But listen carefully to Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio, and it is easy to see how goals are being pared back.
On his Air Force One flight on Sunday evening, Mr. Trump already claimed one big success, contending that “regime change” had already taken place in Iran, even if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and clerical leaders remain in charge of the country.
Blurring the distinction between a change of government system and a change of leaders, he told reporters, “We’ve had regime change,” adding: “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead.” And he maintained that Iran was now in the control of a “third regime,” which is involved in negotiations. He did not urge the Iranian people to rise up, as he did when the war started a month ago, to seize power and overthrow their government — which would be true regime change.
Mr. Rubio, meanwhile, posted on the State Department’s social media account a narrowed group of goals, along with what seemed to be a jab at news organizations that have pointed out the shifting objectives.
“You should write them down,” he wrote, before listing four goals: destroying the air force and navy, “the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability,” and “the destruction of their factories.” But he made no reference to eliminating Iran’s nuclear capability — the ostensible immediate objective of launching the attack — or protecting Iran’s protesters, who were slaughtered in the streets in January, prompting Mr. Trump to declare that help was on the way. Nor did he make, in that list, a reference to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
A few hours later, Ms. Leavitt, offered her own list. She added “dismantle their missile and drone production infrastructure, significantly weaken their proxies throughout the course of this operation and then, of course, preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
While Mr. Trump boasts that Iranian leaders are begging to make a deal, some senior Trump administration officials are privately downplaying the diplomatic progress. Officials said the conversations were better described as “talks” at this stage rather than formal “negotiations.”
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said on Sunday that his country would host talks between the United States and Iran in the coming days, though U.S. officials say no meeting has been scheduled. On Tuesday, Mr. Dar is traveling to Beijing to secure Chinese backing for a framework to host U.S.-Iranian talks.
The Beijing visit follows a second round of consultations on Sunday among the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, a grouping that has convened twice in 10 days as regional powers search for a way to contain a widening conflict.
Vice President JD Vance, who is expected to take part in any face-to-face meeting if one is confirmed, is scheduled to travel to Hungary next week to show support for Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Some officials have said that trip could include another stop for negotiations if Iranian officials agreed to meet.
Mr. Trump has not ruled out increased military aggression should a diplomatic solution continue to elude him. But as the president faces domestic challenges from the war, exacerbated by a partial government shutdown, some of his allies are hoping he finds an end to the conflict within his six-week timeline.
And to address some of those economic challenges, Mr. Trump might be calling on Arab countries to help cover the costs associated with the war. When a reporter noted that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had helped pay for the gulf war in the early 1990s, and asked Ms. Leavitt whether Mr. Trump wanted a similar arrangement, she said the president was “quite interested” in it.
“I won’t get ahead of him on that,” she said. “But certainly it’s an idea that I know that he has and something that I think you’ll hear more from him on.”
Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
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