By Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra

The US led by President Donald Trump with active backing from Israel developed an operational strategy based on robust prior intelligence gathering and pooling of resources to conduct swift and surprise attacks to assassinate the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of his family members. 

The strategy mirrored the American precise and surprise military strikes used to depose the leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. 

The move may have been successful in removing the leaders but lack of accountability, calibrated vagueness and deception underlying this strategy brews more instabilities and uncertainties without corresponding answerability. 

Breaking with the accountability that the US fixed for itself in case of American military operations against the Taliban regime of Afghanistan in 2001 and against the Saddam Hussain regime of Iraq in 2003, the Trump administration did not seek authorization of the Congress nor did he encourage national debate to derive support of citizens for the Iranian military operation. 

Rather, he preferred to address the nation after the surprise strikes were carried out. The US did not alert the Iranian regime before launching of the attacks and nor did he precisely state the demands to be fulfilled by the regime.

Following the June 2025 American military strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities, the US President Trump has proclaimed that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were sufficiently degraded. Then, vagueness emerged what constituted the imminence of Iranian threat this time. 

President Trump indicated his preference for regime change and support for the Iranian protesters. He also mentioned the objective was to destroy the military capabilities of Iran by destroying its ballistic missile programme. He referred to Iran still posing a nuclear threat, and defined Tehran as a state-sponsor of terrorism and considered its “menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world”. 

Whatever reasons the Trump administration provides to justify preemptive strikes by US and Israel, the strikes lacked the minimum level of accountability and clearly failed to reckon with the consequences.

In previous cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, the military operations were launched as the last measure only when other options such as political, economic and diplomatic pressures were exhausted. More significantly, the US took up the long-term mantle of reconstruction and nation-building once the regimes were removed. 

However, the Trump administration breaks with the traditional approach to military intervention in case of Iran. It neither defined the objectives clearly nor did it exhaust other means (nuclear negotiations were conducted in a half-hearted manner) to secure them in case of Iran. 

It is apparent that the US deliberately resorted to ill-defined and shifting objectives accompanied by surprise strikes to bypass accountability. By keeping the objectives vague, the administration believed it could withdraw from the war anytime showing to its citizens and international community that its operations have been successful if any of the nebulously stated objectives was realized. 

President Trump clearly lacks the appetite for reconstruction and nation-building projects outside. He would like to hand over the Iranian mess to the Iranian people. He would like to keep the operations limited to airstrikes, missiles and bombers and hesitate to commit ground troops so that the American casualties would remain very low.

The premeditated attacks by US and Israel were initially successful with the former’s military build-up in the region backing the latter’s stealth intelligence operations. The CCTV cameras that Iran used for surveillance purposes and to regulate traffic were hacked by Mossad- Intelligence Agency of Israel for conducting precision attacks. 

Israel and the US could leverage the Iranian deep factions for gathering intelligence in the last couple of months. 

But, the strategy collapsed as the war progressed. While the US and Israel might have liked to believe that Khamenei’s death would create a leadership vacuum and the military operations would end soon, the void was filled in immediately by next generation leaders defying the calculations and Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Ali Khamenei has been elected and declared the supreme leader. 

Similarly, the leader’s removal did not trigger an internal takeover of the regime, as happened in Bangladesh or Nepal. Instead, the Iranian establishment, made up of hardline clerics, senior military commanders, and a vast security and intelligence network, closed ranks and turned its full attention to survival. Rather than collapsing from within, it reorganized and prepared for a prolonged struggle.

This response also highlights a larger flaw in Washington’s approach. The pattern of military operations pursued under Donald Trump often overlooks how such actions reshape the internal politics of the targeted country, in this case Iran. It pays little attention to how external pressure can strengthen hardliners, deepen regional tensions, and send ripples across the global order.

Two images define this moment in Iran. One shows celebration at the fall of a theocratic strongman. The other shows the regime’s core, security chiefs, clerics, and even uneasy moderates, rallying in defiance of foreign attack.

Donald Trump backed protesters in words, but provided no clear vision of what follows. Regimes fall in many ways, and the aftermath rarely follows a script. A military ramrod, a hardened theocracy, or a weak democratic bid all remain possible. That outcome will turn on Iran’s internal balance of power, not American intent.

War weakens rulers, but it can also fuse elites and stir nationalism. Iran’s future will be mostly determined by the struggle now unfolding within.

That internal struggle is already colliding with a widening war.

Strikes by the United States and Israel killed civilians and set off a relentless cycle of attack and retaliation, placing ordinary lives and critical infrastructure at grave risk with little visible accountability. 

The escalation was never going to remain confined to Iran alone. It has spilled across the region, drawing in American bases, embassies, and energy assets.

Iranian responses have targeted military facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Civilian sites, including airports and hotels, have also come under fire, aimed majorly at psychological shock. 

The message is clear: this conflict now threatens the stability and image of the entire Gulf.

Clearly, Iran is a more powerful and larger country than Venezuela where the Trump administration had previously carried out operations. Its military assets are spread over a large area. Hence, it was likely that American calculation about Iran’s power and the levels of destruction the protracted war will have on civilian lives and infrastructure might go wrong. 

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With each strike from Iran on American military facilities in the Middle East, the US pronounces the war would continue until it avenges on the regime which could spell disastrous consequences for civilians lives and institutions. 

The Middle East turmoil has already led to deaths of many Iranians which is estimated to be more than 700, cancellation of flights, disruption of energy supplies and decimation of buildings and civilian facilities and casualties in other countries of the Middle East. 

More significantly, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow sea-route with a width of 33 kilometers that connects the European and Asian shores through which around 25 percent of crude oil traverses. 

This will skyrocket the prices of oil and the ordinary people will bear the brunt of the US’s unaccountable military operations. 

The immigrants in the region remained stranded with expectations from their host and home countries to extend them all-out assistance for safety and rescue. 

The United States has lost far fewer lives so far, but even that number holds weight. It is enough to put pressure on Trump to step up the campaign. 

He has always shown very little tolerance for American casualties, and openly criticized earlier presidents for putting soldiers in harm’s way and later pulled back troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The Teflon Don likely expected this operation to be quick and decisive, something like what he believed happened in Venezuela. 

That expectation has not matched reality.

The author is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at SVM Autonomous College in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

© Kashmir Observer