Last month, after the United States toppled and captured the leader of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, there was an immediate expectation that the White House would try something similar in Iran. But President Donald Trump reportedly held back partly because he didn’t have enough military assets in the Middle East. That is now changing. In recent weeks, the Pentagon has stationed a carrier strike group and missile defense systems in the region, even as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran has ramped up.

Will Trump actually pull the trigger? To understand his motivations and constraints, I spoke with a leading Iran expert, Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on FP Live. Subscribers can watch the full conversation on the video box atop this page, or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.

Last month, after the United States toppled and captured the leader of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, there was an immediate expectation that the White House would try something similar in Iran. But President Donald Trump reportedly held back partly because he didn’t have enough military assets in the Middle East. That is now changing. In recent weeks, the Pentagon has stationed a carrier strike group and missile defense systems in the region, even as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran has ramped up.

Will Trump actually pull the trigger? To understand his motivations and constraints, I spoke with a leading Iran expert, Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on FP Live. Subscribers can watch the full conversation on the video box atop this page, or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: The White House’s posture toward Iran is similar to its posture toward Venezuela at the start of this year: a big military presence and the threat of decapitating the top leader. But Iran is not Venezuela. How likely is it that the United States will use force?

Karim Sadjadpour: The military option is still likely, but it’s probably not imminent. I do think, despite the talks that have happened and are expected to happen in the coming weeks, that the likelihood that Trump will take military action is much higher than the probability of a deal.

It’s useful to look back at Donald Trump’s more than eight-year history with Iran. In 2018, President Trump famously pulled out of [former President Barack] Obama’s nuclear deal, the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], although many of his aides warned him that that could trigger regional conflict. In January 2020, he assassinated Iran’s top military commander, Qassem Suleimani, despite the best advice of many of his aides, who worried that could trigger a regional conflict. And then last summer, he dropped 14 bunker busters on Iran’s nuclear sites, which many believed would also trigger a potentially global war.

In Trump’s mind, each of these gambles were vindicated. And now, Iran is weaker than it’s ever been, because it doesn’t control its own skies or own its own airspace. So if Trump sees that these negotiations are not going anywhere, the likelihood that he will take military action is higher than the likelihood we get a deal. But it’s not necessarily going to happen in the coming week or two.

RA: You used the word “gamble.” It strikes me that gambles can go to plan or go completely awry. Part of the assessment here is what Iran’s defenses are like, how desperate they are, and what they might do in response. Talk to us about the state of play on that front. During the 12-day war last year, it was clear that Iran had lost air control. But they still possess ballistic missiles, and over the course of those 12 days, they improved at targeting those missiles—so they could feasibly still inflict serious regional damage, right?

KS: One thing that Iran has telegraphed this time is that if they are attacked, they are going to regionalize the war. They still have thousands of close-range ballistic missiles, and they are threatening to use that against U.S. bases and potentially oil installations throughout the Persian Gulf.

After last June’s war, some of the [Islamic] Revolutionary Guard [Corps] commanders, and potentially even [Supreme Leader] Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei, believed that their lack of a strong response projected weakness. For that reason, they now need to threaten that there will be a significant cost.

One of the audiences are the Gulf countries whose leaderships have a close relationship with President Trump. They want those........

© Foreign Policy