War fever is spiking again in Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran. Before stumbling into another round, American policymakers should urgently reexamine two basic questions: What would the United States hope to accomplish in battle this time? And how should it project military power in the region now and in the future?
The U.S.-Iran conflict has been going on for so long that it sometimes seems stuck on replay. But the chapter that began in February changed the Middle East battlespace, likely forever. Deterrence failed. U.S. military bases in the region were ravaged. So were Gulf nations that had relied on American power. The old regime in Tehran was decapitated, but it was replaced by cocky hard-liners who seem convinced they can outlast a war-weary superpower.
What’s next? For now, the region is holding its breath, awaiting the outcome of Israel’s election Tuesday and the U.S. midterms a week later. But U.S. forces are surging into the region, and commanders are said to be preparing military options for President Donald Trump. One ominous sign is that the U.S. embassy in Riyadh ordered some employees to leave, and other U.S. embassies in the region are reportedly making similar moves.
“Since the beginning of the war, Trump has been in search of a knockout punch that forces Tehran to capitulate,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who’s probably America’s wisest Iran analyst. He cautioned: “History has shown this regime tends to compromise not in the face of military threats alone, but when it faces existential economic pressure and is offered a limited diplomatic exit.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still wants regime change. “There is only one way to remove this threat once and for all: overthrow the regime in Iran,” he said Wednesday. Trump hasn’t gone that far, but he said Sunday that “we will soon finish the job” if Iran’s leaders don’t “change their ways, rapidly.”
The message has definitely registered in Tehran. I was interviewed Thursday by the online Iranian news site Entekhab TV, and most questions focused on the possibility of renewed war. The interviewer kept pressing: What was Trump’s goal? What changes did he seek in the memorandum of understanding signed in June that paused the war but then dissolved? Would the outcome of the midterm elections make a difference? I didn’t have answers for many of his queries.
Lack of strategic clarity in the White House has, unfortunately, been a hallmark of this war. At the outset, Netanyahu and his intelligence advisers convinced Trump that by killing Iran’s leaders, they could start a cascade that would topple the regime. That didn’t happen. Instead, the hard-liners were emboldened by their ability to survive the all-out assault.
Trump sent Vice President JD Vance to Islamabad to offer what the administration called a “golden bridge” to the future for Iran if it would meet U.S. demands. What emerged was the wobbly MOU, which quickly collapsed as the U.S. and Iran traded fire in the Strait of Hormuz.
After that failure, Trump settled on a policy that combined armed escorts of Western oil tankers through the strait with economic strangulation of Iran. That combination, to me, has been the president’s most successful approach to date. But it hasn’t guaranteed his red line: Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. So, after nearly eight months of war, Trump is weighing whether to resume combat.
If America goes back to war, how will it organize its forces? That’s the second question planners need to assess.
U.S. Central Command, which has been preparing to fight Iran for a generation, was rocked by Tehran’s use of drones and missiles. The Fifth Fleet’s headquarters in Bahrain was severely damaged, and the Navy won’t return there “anytime soon,” according to Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations. Centcom’s huge air base at Al Udeid in Qatar was also battered, though air operations for the region had been relocated mostly to South Carolina beforehand.
“This is the moment to rethink the shape of the American military presence in the Middle East,” argued Richard Fontaine, who heads the Center for a New American Security. “The archipelago of U.S. military bases has been shown to be vulnerable.”
Countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that spent billions on fancy American weapons must now be asking, “Where’s the deterrent capability of those forces?” said Stu Jones, the head of the Middle East Institute. Rather than preventing Iranian attacks, Centcom’s forward bases turned out to be a magnet for them.
For now, with the bases damaged and vulnerable to drones and missiles, Centcom will have to rely on stand-off forces at sea and distant air bases. That may be a better architecture for the future, too. These forces can be surged into the Middle East when there’s a crisis, but they can spend most of their time in Asia, to which successive administrations have tried to “pivot.”
But H.R. McMaster, a veteran of two decades of war in the Middle East and former national security adviser, cautions that “you can’t accomplish political goals with stand-off forces.” To reassure local partners, Centcom will need layered air defenses and some hardened underground military bases. The Middle East isn’t about to disappear, and the long-term need to contain Iran will probably continue.
The Iran war is unpopular because it lacks a coherent endgame. Rolling the dice once again on regime change, as Netanyahu urges, isn’t a wise bet. Someday, perhaps with America’s covert assistance, the Iranian people will be able to install a government that answers their yearning for freedom and modern life. But another spasm of violence won’t help anyone.
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