Trump’s
so-called “precision” strikes will probably spur the creation of a real bomb
and spiral into a regime change-driven war.
U.S.
and Israeli flags are projected on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City on
June 22, 2025, following the U.S. involvement in the war between Israel
and Iran. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
With the decision to bomb three
of Iran’s nuclear sites, President Donald Trump has put the United States on a
reckless path that risks another Middle East war — precisely the kind he has
repeatedly promised to avoid.
Even if the strikes achieved
short-term tactical success, they have turned a challenge that could have been
managed diplomatically into a military crisis. Hitting a few facilities will
not dismantle Iran’s nuclear program; it will only push it further underground
and harden Tehran’s resolve, closing the door on a negotiated agreement with
monitoring mechanisms like those in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
— the deal Trump abandoned after taking office the first time.
The likely outcome is a
reconstituted nuclear program pursued with greater determination to build a
weapon. Rather than halting Iran’s progress, these so-called “precision”
strikes could very well spiral into a much broader, possibly
regime-change-driven war.
Vice President JD Vance has
claimed that the U.S. is “not at war with Iran, we’re at war with Iran’s
nuclear program.” But even if that distinction is intended, launching strikes
on Iran in coordination with Israel right in the middle of fragile nuclear negotiations
that were given only two months to succeed, when meaningful diplomacy would
require far longer, will be understood in Tehran as a broader act of
aggression.
Coupled with incendiary rhetoric
from some Israeli officials, it risks being interpreted not as a limited
operation, but as a declaration of intent to dismantle the regime. Trump’s
praise of U.S.-Israeli teamwork in announcing the strikes makes Washington
appear complicit in Israel’s wider strategy, including its ongoing
assassination campaigns, and will only reinforce Iran’s belief that regime
change is the end goal.
This escalation has endangered
U.S. troops and diplomatic posts in the region — particularly in Iraq and
Syria. The administration is once again mistaking short-term military impact
for long-term strategic success, repeating the same hubris that followed the
early weeks of the Iraq War and President George W. Bush’s ill-fated “Mission
Accomplished” moment.
Trump was not acting in a vacuum;
he was warned by lawmakers and even thought leaders within his own movement
about the consequences. Yet, his White House is diving into another volatile
conflict without a plan for what comes next. This is not the end of a crisis —
it is the beginning of something far more dangerous.
Lawmakers such as Speaker of the
House Mike Johnson, R-La., may insist that the U.S. was facing “imminent
danger,” but the facts tell a different story. Both the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) and Trump’s own director of national intelligence, Tulsi
Gabbard, concluded that Iran was not actively racing toward a nuclear weapon.
The narrative of an urgent threat from weapons of mass destruction echoes so
clearly the lead-up to the Iraq War that the parallels are impossible to
dismiss.
This isn’t a tired cliché — it’s
a grim chorus of history repeating itself, not as farce, but as another willful
march toward unnecessary war.
The lesson for the Iranian
government, whether it is too late or not, will be that they should have
pursued a nuclear capability faster and more secretly, a lesson that will be
observed by other regimes around the world. This should be a chilling realization
for the international community.
Some analysts may mistakenly
believe that this strike, alongside past actions like the assassination of Quds
Force commander Qassem Soleimani, adds credibility to Trump’s future threats
and strengthens his hand in nuclear negotiations with Iran. But that view
ignores a fundamental reality: like all countries, Iran has domestic politics.
If its leadership is seen as capitulating to U.S. and Israeli aggression, it
risks internal collapse.
By boxing Iran into a corner,
Trump hasn’t increased diplomatic leverage — he has made meaningful negotiation
nearly impossible. He may celebrate this as a show of strength, but it’s
shortsighted. Iran was already at the negotiating table, and now the message to
other adversaries may not be to concede under pressure — but rather to develop
credible deterrents to avoid becoming the next target.
The deeper tragedy is that Trump
had a real opportunity to broker a strong nuclear agreement with Iran. As a
second-term president, he had both the political freedom and even some
bipartisan support to pursue a broader, long-term deal — one that might have
eventually laid the groundwork for normalized relations.
Instead, he chose confrontation
over diplomacy, goaded on by interventionist lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz,
R-Texas, and those who have long pushed for regime change far beyond the
nuclear issue. What could have been a landmark diplomatic achievement has now
become just another step toward prolonged conflict.
It is, of course, not too late to
change course, though recent U.S. actions have made diplomacy far more
difficult, and Iranian retaliation is almost certain. Still, making clear that
a negotiated deal remains on the table is better than not offering one at all.
The problem, however, is that
Iran now has little reason to trust the United States, many incentives to
pursue a nuclear deterrent — which it probably still can — and few motivations
to agree to any new deal. Worse, the calls for regime change may only grow
louder as a result leading to a war that is even more destabilizing than the
Iraq war.
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