With his large-scale attack on Iran, Donald Trump has seized a legacy-defining moment to demonstrate his readiness to exercise raw U.S. military power. But in doing so, he is also taking the biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency, one fraught with risks and unknowns.

Trump joined with Israel on Saturday to plunge into war against Iran, providing little explanation to the ‌American public for what could become the biggest U.S. military campaign since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump has pivoted away from a preference for swift, limited operations like last month’s lightning raid in Venezuela to what experts warn could be a more protracted conflict with Iran that risks escalating into a regional conflagration engulfing the oil-rich Middle East.

The president, who came to office promising to avoid "stupid wars," has also set out a daunting objective of regime change in Tehran, pushing the idea that air strikes can incite a popular uprising to oust Iran's ‌rulers.

It is an outcome that outside air power has never directly achieved in other conflicts without the involvement of some kind of armed force on the ground, and ⁠which most analysts doubt will succeed this time in Iran.

"Most Americans will wake up Saturday morning and wonder why we are at war with Iran, what is the goal, ⁠and why U.S. bases in the Middle East are under ⁠attack," said Daniel Shapiro, a former senior Pentagon official and U.S. ambassador to Israel who is now at the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington.

Trump's fixation on Iran has emerged as the starkest example yet of how foreign policy, ‌including his expanded use of military might, has topped his agenda in the first 13 months of his second term, often overshadowing domestic issues like the cost of living that public opinion polls show are much higher priorities for most ⁠Americans.

His own aides have been privately urging him for........

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