President Trump’s ambiguity over his endgame for Iran is setting off a scramble for influence among lawmakers, foreign officials and analysts pushing everything from diplomacy to regime change after U.S. strikes on its key nuclear facilities this weekend.

Iran on Monday retaliated with missiles fired at the U.S. air base at Al Udeid in Qatar, which were shot down without any reported casualties. Trump thanked Iran for giving advance notice of the strike and later announced a ceasefire deal that he said would end the “12 day war.”

However, it’s unclear whether Tehran is ready to resume negotiations over the future of its nuclear program, or how long the ceasefire will hold if it doesn’t.

“It stands to reason that this would be a sort of a doubling or tripling of leverage,” said Barbara Leaf, who most recently served as assistant secretary for Near East policy in the Biden administration, of the military strikes.

“[Trump] would have wiped out, in large part, the heart of the program, and so negotiations would then take him the rest of the way. Again, that's a big theoretical gamble.”

While the majority of the GOP, and some Democrats, are supporting Trump’s Saturday night strikes, critics in Congress have introduced a war powers resolution to try to block........

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