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The term Orwellian is often trotted out as a cliché, but it suits the confluence of President Donald Trump’s two big actions today—holding the first meeting of his “Board of Peace” and finishing the mobilization of a massive military force on the flanks of Iran, ready to attack the Islamic Republic as soon as this weekend.

His Board of Peace, to which Trump said the U.S. would commit $10 billion (for what, it’s unclear), seems largely theatrical. The war in Gaza, which Trump claims to have ended, persists—Israel continues its demolitions, while Hamas is tightening its grip on the place and refusing to disarm—and the board’s larger goal of supplanting or overseeing the United Nations worldwide is fanciful, to say the least.

Meanwhile, the point of the armed buildup around Iran—the largest assembly of U.S. warplanes and warships in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq—is remarkably unclear. The U.S. armada mobilized to the region includes 18 warships (two of which are aircraft carriers) and many fighter jets, bombers, antimissile systems, and electronic jammers on nearby bases. This is enough to fight a weekslong battle, hitting targets related to any and all of those missions and disabling or intercepting most of the missiles that Iran might launch in response. But for what purpose—and with what chance of success, whatever the purpose might be—is another question.

Does Trump want to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, dismantle its ballistic missile sites, pull down the regime, or simply threaten a combination of all three to pressure the Iranians to make a “deal”—but a deal to do what?

In January, Trump threatened “strong” military action against Iran if its leaders killed any of the growing mass of anti-government protesters. Tehran canceled the execution of one protester, leading Trump to pronounce his demand satisfied. However, troops and police proceeded to mow down thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of protesters in the streets, to no objection from Washington. As was the case in Venezuela, democracy and human rights were pieces of Trump’s original war rhetoric—but not in his war policy.

Many were shocked when his real policy in Venezuela turned out to be abducting its criminal president, Nicolás Maduro, and compelling his successors—who had been deputies in Maduro’s Cabinet—to cede control of their country’s oil to the United States. Maria Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, who expected to take power if Maduro were overthrown, was pushed under the bus. (Her attempt to gain Trump’s favor—giving him the Nobel Peace Prize trophy that she won but that he thought he’d deserved—was a futile gesture.)

So what, exactly, is Trump up to in Iran?

Is he now going after its oil? Probably not, though keeping the oil from being traded to Iran’s biggest customer, China, might be part of the equation. Still, the assembled armada seems overkill for that goal.

Trump says his main concern is to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon. The irony is that Trump claimed to “obliterate” the nation’s nuclear program in last June’s attack—known as Operation Midnight Hammer—on Iran’s mountain-buried enriched-uranium site. As many noted at the time, Trump exaggerated the extent of the damage; for one thing, Iranians might have removed much of the uranium in anticipation of the assault. However, the damage did significantly set back Iran’s program, perhaps by a few years. What is the rush now?

Iran’s ballistic missiles endanger Israel and U.S. bases in the region. In the brief Iran-Israel war last summer, 90 percent of Iran’s missiles were shot down or crashed before reaching their targets. But Iran launched 550 missiles, as well as 1,000 drones, and the 50 or so that pierced through the defenses inflicted considerable damage. It is not known how many missiles Iran has now—probably a few thousand. Manufacturing sites are concentrated and can be taken out fairly easily, but the missiles themselves are small and mobile. Many would survive an initial onslaught, and if Tehran’s leaders think their regime is about to be crushed, they might decide to launch a massive retaliation, bringing down their enemies along with themselves. In fact, in recent weeks, some Middle East leaders, notably the Saudis and other Sunnis (who have been fighting proxy wars against Iran on various fronts) urged Trump not to attack Iran, fearing that Iran would return fire against their lands too. They have barred U.S. planes from flying over their territory if Trump does decide to attack.

Here, then, is another irony. As a result of last summer’s missile exchanges, June’s Midnight Hammer, and a string of devastating attacks on Iran’s main proxy militias, Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is now stronger and Iran is weaker than they have been in decades. Trump’s mobilization in the region underlines this disparity. Does Iran really pose a threat that justifies such a massive U.S. reaction?

Then again, from Israel’s perspective, Iran’s relative weakness is the point. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long pushed for regime change in Tehran. Though he never said so explicitly, his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, which President Barack Obama and six other leaders signed in 2014, wasn’t so much fear of an Iranian bomb (the accord really did all but stop its development) as fear that the removal of Iran’s sanctions and its integration into the world economy—the rewards for dismantling its nuclear apparatus—would solidify the Islamic Republic’s position, strengthen its international standing, and thereby increase Israel’s vulnerability, if not to nuclear bombs, then to other forms of intimidation. During Trump’s first term, Netanyahu persuaded him to rip up the nuclear deal; with the president now in his second term, the prime minister is hoping to lasso him into finishing off the regime.

The Iranian government is a horror. It represses its own people, now more than ever; it assists terrorists; and it’s an economic disaster as well. But it’s worth asking: If the mullahs are toppled or lose their grip on power in one way or another, who replaces them? It’s extremely unlikely that the successors would be the Western-leaning urban youth who have been demonstrating in the streets. They lack leaders and organizers, mainly because the regime has imprisoned or killed rising potential leaders—and disabled or co-opted tools and technologies that could enable organization.

If the mullahs fell, power would likely be picked up by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is the Iranian army’s elite unit, with more than 150,000 personnel, who protect the regime, control much of the economy, and are no less hostile than the supreme leader and his mullahs toward Israel, Sunnis, and the West.

It’s possible that U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies have made contact with certain IRGC officers, discussing terms of mutual support in the event of regime change. We now know that the CIA infiltrated the Venezuelan leadership, which helped the U.S. Special Forces track down Maduro. However, we don’t yet know whether or how long Venezuela’s old-new leaders will keep to their side of whatever long-term bargain they might have struck. It’s doubly uncertain whether any emerging IRGC strongmen—with whom the U.S. has had no aboveground relationship at all—would honor any deal. It’s a very poor bet to act on the assumption that they would.

Which leads to the final possibility: that Trump is amassing all this firepower to pressure the Iranians to make a deal. He has said that, to avoid dreadful consequences, Iran must agree to enrich no uranium, dismantle its ballistic missiles, and sever relations with Shiite militias in the region.

The problem is that these terms are untenable to Iran, and would be even if the country had more-pliant leaders.

In the early stages of negotiation toward the 2014 nuclear deal, Obama also pushed for a ban on enrichment but soon realized that this was a dead end. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which is observed by 191 nation-states, including Iran) not only allows its signatories to enrich uranium to 3 percent purity, but it enshrines that level of enrichment as a right. This level is very low. “Highly enriched” uranium is defined as 20 percent, “weapons-grade” as 90 percent. The treaty further allows international inspectors to verify whether countries are abiding with this limit. Obama’s Iran nuclear deal had tight inspection procedures; Iran was declared in compliance.

For Iran to accept a ban on enrichment, when the rest of the world is entitled to some, would be tantamount to surrender before a shot has been fired. No leader, Islamist or otherwise, would accept this.

A ban on ballistic missiles is also unlikely, as they are Iran’s main source of deterrence. Iran’s support for radical militias—such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—does clarify the regime’s nature: A government can legitimately observe a right to bear conventional arms and enrich uranium (a little bit, anyway) but not to arm havoc-wreaking militias. Still, the Iranians have relied so heavily on these militias for power in the region that they would need tangible benefits to cut the cord.

What is the Trump administration offering Iran in return for taking such extraordinary measures? The question is misleading. There is no “Trump administration” when it comes to such matters. There is only Trump and his two emissaries, fellow real-estate tycoon Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. They have supplanted, and for the most part ignored, the experienced experts in the State Department and the National Security Council who usually hammer out positions and handle negotiations.

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Witkoff has no diplomatic experience whatever. Kushner did play a role in the Abraham Accords, which formalized diplomatic and economic relations between Israel and some Arab states (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco), but those nations already had informal relations, and they were not at all in a state of war.

Like Trump, they seem to believe that diplomacy requires no special knowledge and that dealmaking is dealmaking, whether you’re dealing with the Kremlin, the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the New York City Buildings Department. This blithe arrogance is naivete disguised as hardheadedness, and it goes a long way toward explaining the pair’s utter failure at settling the war in Ukraine. (There, they don’t grasp Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motive for war. If they did, they would realize that he doesn’t want peace without the complete subjugation of Kyiv.)

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What happens these next few days in and around Iran? Who knows. It’s possible Trump himself doesn’t know. The Iranians will try to stretch out the negotiations, which they probably see as inherently fruitless. Trump may wait them out for a while, but perhaps not for long. If he starts a war, he may try to keep it limited at first, but the Iranians may escalate, anticipating their worst-case scenario, which Trump may then make a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Wars, once started, sometimes spiral out of control. This is why it’s smart for leaders to know what they want, and know how far they want to press things, before they make their first move. It’s also why, in negotiating a peaceful way out of a crisis, it’s good for them to know what the other side wants too—not necessarily to appease them but to scope out the boundaries of what’s possible without war and, given that, whether it’s better to modify peace terms or go to war.

At this point, it looks like Trump, pushed by Netanyahu, is rushing into conflict recklessly.

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