Trump has six options that will decide the future of Iran

For someone so instinctively non-interventionist, Donald Trump has developed a taste for military action – particularly when the battle is short and decisive.

The snatch-and-run operation to spirit Nicolás Maduro out of Venezuela last month and last year’s bunker-busting raids on Iran’s nuclear facilities allowed the US president to savour emphatic victories without entanglement. Both reinforced his belief that force, swiftly applied, can deliver results.

Emboldened by those successes, determined to reassert Washington’s global primacy, and sensing what he sees as a historic opportunity to force Iran into giving up its nuclear program – or even removing a regime that has menaced the Middle East for nearly half a century – Trump is again contemplating the military option.

This time, however, the gamble is far greater. If the US president decides to use force, it is conceivable that he could indeed topple the ayatollahs who have suffocated and subjugated Iran for decades.

But if things go wrong, he could also ignite a regional conflagration, spark a civil war and drag the US into the very kind of forever conflict he has long railed against.

“The risks are immense, but so are the rewards,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of research for Israeli military intelligence. “It is a very difficult decision to make.”

Last month, as Trump promised protesters on Iran’s streets that help was “on the way”, Israel lobbied against US military strikes. Officials feared that having burnt through its interceptor air defence stockpile during last year’s war, the country was left dangerously exposed to an Iranian ballistic-missile counter-attack.

Those concerns have been partly allayed by the build-up of US offensive and defensive assets in the region. With the US and Iran seemingly unable to reach a compromise during several rounds of negotiations this week, Israel is poised to support American military action.

US officials had previously said the military would be ready to strike as early as February 22.

Israel is now believed to be keen for Trump to take action, even as anxious Gulf powers urge restraint.

The US president has threatened to strike Iran if no deal is struck over its nuclear program, while leaders including himself and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have accused Iran of developing missiles that could hit the US.

Much depends on what, precisely, Trump is trying to achieve – something that has grown less clear now that the protests in Iran have been crushed.

Is he seeking to punish Iran for slaughtering thousands – and possibly tens of thousands – of its own people? Is the aim to force Iran into a deal in which it formally abandons its nuclear program? Or is he pursuing regime change – and if so, what would that actually look like?

Diplomats and analysts say there are essentially six scenarios under consideration.

Military pressure alone

The Iranian regime has rarely looked weaker. The three pillars of its regional power – its network of proxy militias, its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal – have all been significantly degraded over the past two years. The brutal suppression of last month’s protests has diminished what little domestic legitimacy it retained. Fear alone sustains the system.

A show of might, rather than force, may therefore be sufficient to extract major concessions. With their survival at stake, Iran’s rulers might countenance steps they have long rejected: formally abandoning nuclear ambitions, dismantling proxy networks and surrendering remaining ballistic missiles – perhaps even sacrificing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

Such an outcome would hand Trump a major foreign policy triumph without a shot being fired. Nothing would burnish his credentials more.

Yet diplomats regard it as unlikely. The regime appears determined to “resist rather than retreat”, says one. If Tehran digs in and Washington then backs away, Trump risks looking weak.

The symbolic strike

Having set a red line – threatening military action if the regime continued killing protesters – Trump has placed himself under pressure to act. Even after deciding against striking during the protests and even as negotiations with Tehran went on this week, the US president’s military threats continued. The last thing he wants is to be likened to Barack Obama, who failed to enforce his own red lines in Syria.

If credibility is his overriding concern, the president could opt for a limited, largely symbolic strike, echoing his 2017 and 2018 missile attacks on Syrian regime targets.

Under such a scenario, US forces might hit one or two high-profile sites, such as the Thar-Allah headquarters in Tehran, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centre widely seen as the nerve hub of internal repression. The destruction of such a building would be celebrated by many Iranians.

This would be a “low-cost, low-reward” option, one diplomat says. Trump could claim to have kept his word while minimising the risk of retaliation. However, any initial, smaller-scale strike is likely to act as a prelude to a larger operation, unless Iran gives up its nuclear enrichment capabilities, US officials told The Wall Street Journal this week.

Limited substantive action

Trump could choose broader strikes designed to encourage renewed unrest, placing the regime under simultaneous external and internal pressure.

Such a campaign would probably last several days, potentially even weeks, according to US officials, targeting air defences, ballistic missile launchers, communications infrastructure, energy facilities and IRGC installations, including facilities linked to the Basij militia responsible for much of the violent suppression of the protests.

The objective would be to create conditions in which Iranians might seize the initiative themselves, allowing the US to facilitate, rather than directly engineer, regime change.

The risks are considerable.

Protesters, exhausted, traumatised and suspicious after Trump’s change of mind, may not respond. Strikes could instead rally the population around the regime, as they did during the June 12-day war. Many IRGC and Basij facilities sit in densely populated areas, raising the likelihood of civilian casualties.

And Iran, which still retains a substantial missile arsenal despite the losses suffered in June, could retaliate against Israel or the Gulf states.

The Maduro option

Should Israel or the US acquire actionable intelligence, Trump might authorise an operation to capture or kill Khamenei – something he was reluctant to contemplate last year.

“We know exactly where the so-called supreme leader is hiding,” he said during the 12-day war. “He is an easy target, but… we are not going to take him out, at least not for now.”

Such a strike would allow Trump a Maduro moment, though on a vastly greater scale. But locating Khamenei may now be far harder. US officials told Axios this week that any operation would probably resemble a large-scale war, rather than the brief Venezuela operation which took place at the start of the year.

After the war in June, the regime launched an extensive counter-espionage purge, arresting thousands and executing an unknown number. Security around senior officials has tightened, safe houses have multiplied and Khamenei rarely appears in public.

Even if successful, there is no guarantee his successor would prove pliant – or stabilising.

The Gaddafi option

Should limited action fail, Trump could escalate, sustaining airstrikes until the regime collapses, while providing support to re-emerging protests.

“If the Iranian regime is going to be removed, the reward for the safety and security of the world, and of the Middle East in particular, would be immense,” said Kuperwasser. “It justifies the risks.”

This is a likely option should Iran refuse to make concessions in the face of an initial, more limited strike, according to US officials.

Those risks are formidable. It took seven months to topple Gaddafi, and Iran – unlike Libya – has no organised rebel force advancing on the capital. A prolonged campaign would risk a rupture between Mr Trump and the anti-interventionist wing of his base.

Facing a threat to its existence, Iran could attempt to ignite the region, striking Israel, US bases and even naval assets. It could target Gulf oil facilities or attempt to seal the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring and undermining Trump’s domestic priorities.

This helps explain why Gulf allies, despite warm ties with the White House, oppose strikes so resolutely and have refused to allow the US to use their territory, airspace or waters for an attack on Iran.

They fear what might follow regime collapse. “The risk of chaos, even of civil war, is unacceptably high,” said one former Arab diplomat. “Containment may be safer than confrontation.”

The Saddam option

One path Trump is almost certainly not considering is an Iraq-style ground invasion.

Boots on the ground would be the most effective way to topple the regime, but managing a transition in Iran – a country nearly four times the size of Iraq, with twice the population and a far more complex social fabric – would be vastly harder.

Trump has been accused of bombast, but not even his foes consider him gung-ho. The last thing he wants is another Iraq – though he may find that, having ordered military action, he has stumbled into the kind of Middle Eastern entanglement he long swore to avoid.

Trump has shown that he believes wars can be won quickly, cleanly and on his own terms. A new intervention may yet prove him right – but Iran could just as easily be the place where his foreign policy starts to unravel.

The Telegraph, London

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