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Trump Risks a Greater Catastrophe in the Iran Conflict

Considering the costs so far as we wait on the precipice of another round of fighting.

On February 28, President Trump undertook what can best be described as a cosmic roll of the dice: prompted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and defense hawks in Washington, he commenced an intense air and missile campaign at Iran, seeking to topple its clerical regime and destroy its nuclear facilities and conventional war-making capability. In placing his bet, Trump reportedly disregarded concerns expressed by Vice President JD Vance and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the dangers of becoming trapped in yet another extended Middle Eastern conflict. Evidently flushed with success from his January 3 gambit in Venezuela—where US forces overcame minimal resistance to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro—Trump assumed that the Iran venture would proceed just as smoothly, and reap even greater rewards. “It’s going to work very easily. It’s going to work like it did in Venezuela,” he told CNN shortly after the war began.

With every subsequent press appearance, Trump insisted that the war was succeeding brilliantly and that Iran’s leaders (or what was left of them) were preparing to surrender at any moment. “Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track and the country has been eviscerated and essentially is really no longer a threat,” he told a nationwide television audience on April 1.

But the gamble did not pay off as Trump imagined it would. Despite being subjected to 13,000 air and missile strikes in just five weeks, Iran was not “eviscerated” but proved capable of attacking US military facilities throughout the Persian Gulf area and obstructing oil traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz, precipitating a global energy crisis. Nor has Trump been able to coerce Iran’s surviving leaders into succumbing to his demands for the cessation of all nuclear enrichment activities and the surrender of the country’s remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium. The United States “is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared on April 27, speaking of Tehran’s continuing resistance to Trump’s demands.

Humiliation is, of course, the condition Trump most detests (for himself, that is, not for those he chooses to humiliate). He has sought retribution against all those members of Congress and public officials who, he believes, contributed to the public humiliation of being impeached—not once, but twice—or found guilty of assorted crimes. We can assume, then, that he will not accept “humiliation” as the outcome in Iran and will seek some way to force Tehran to accept his terms for surrender. “They have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity,” he wrote in a May 2 post on Truth Social. Seeing that a naval blockade of Iranian shipping has not achieved that outcome, he is likely to roll the dice again and resume active military attacks on Iran—an outcome bound to prove catastrophic for all involved.

Before reckoning the potential costs of a renewed assault on Iran, it is useful to summarize the outcome of the first 38-day installment of Operation Epic Fury. What was accomplished and what was lost?

On the positive side of the ledger, Trump can claim the decimation of Iran’s conventional military forces and significant impairment of its military-industrial capacity. In a fact sheet released by the White House on April 8, the administration claimed that “Iran’s air forces have been functionally neutered,” “Iran’s navy has been obliterated,” and that “more than 85% of the regime’s defense industrial base, including the majority of its ballistic missiles, launcher vehicles, and long-range attack drones, has been destroyed.” This, no doubt, represents a significant blow to Iran’s military power and renders it even more vulnerable to future US (and Israeli) strikes. (It does, however, overlook the fact that Iran possesses substantial unconventional capabilities, including lethal drones that can be launched from the back of a truck and strike targets throughout the Gulf area.)

What was not achieved: From the start, Trump insisted that his goals in Iran included the incapacitation (if not outright elimination) of its clerical regime and the permanent eradication of its capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons. “We will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said on February 28 when........

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