President Donald Trump has framed his strikes on Iran as a costless triumph. The president is not asking Americans to accept sacrifices in service of destroying the Iranian nuclear program — only to applaud his already successful destruction of it.

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Trump declared Saturday night. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”

It’s possible that Trump’s war will unwind as advertised. The Iranian regime finds itself in a state of profound weakness. Israel has gutted its air defenses and flies largely unharried through its skies. Iran’s nuclear facilities are badly damaged, while many of its top atomic scientists and military leaders lie dead. Its most fearsome partner militias — Hezbollah and Hamas — are badly degraded. Its longtime allies in Damascus have been deposed. Its friends in Moscow seem to have too much on their own plates to lend much of a hand.

From this precarious position, the Iranian leadership might conclude that it can ill afford an escalating conflict with the world’s greatest military power. Perhaps, it will follow the same basic playbook it did following Trump’s assasination of its military leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020: Back then, Iran responded with face-saving strikes on US military bases in Iraq — but ones that it heavily telegraphed, enabling American soldiers to take cover and retain their lives, which in turn allowed Trump to call things even and end the conflict. Iran’s strike on a US base in Qatar on Monday could be interpreted as fitting this mold: The US said that it had advanced warning of the strike and that there were no American casualties.

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