Donald Trump has urged Iranians to ‘take over’ their government after the United States and Israel struck targets across the country. A multitude of Iranian military and government targets were hit by missiles in what is turning out to be a joint operation far more comprehensive than the 12-day air campaign last June. Back then, Trump’s objectives were limited: degrade Iran’s three largest nuclear facilities. This time, Trump’s eyes are on a bigger prize – a full-scale decapitation of the Iranian leadership and a degradation of Tehran’s military power.
Trump has just rolled the dice and plunged the United States into yet another war in the Middle East
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” Trump said in a short address an hour before the US airstrikes occurred. “We’re going to annihilate their navy. We’re going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilise the region or the world and attack our forces..And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.”
Not be outdone, Trump also urged the Iranian people to take advantage by reclaiming their country and overthrowing their own government. The implication being that the United States will soften up the Islamic Republic to the point where it will fall like a house of cards.
Key power centres have already been struck in the initial hours, from the Iranian parliament and Ministry of Intelligence to the president’s office. This suggests that regime-change is Trump’s paramount objective. Who or what authority would take over once the clerics leave, or whether the airpower alone will be enough to bring the Iranian government down – history is unsympathetic on that score – are a set of questions no policymaker or analyst can confidently predict.
What can be stated unequivocally is that Trump has just rolled the dice and plunged the United States into yet another war in the Middle East. This is despite Trump campaigning as the man who would finally put an end to the myriad conflicts the US military has been engaged in since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Trump of 2026 sounds extremely different from the Trump of 2016, who once stepped on the presidential debate stage and excoriated a Republican president, George W. Bush, for being stupid enough to send U.S. troops into a costly, high-intensity war they didn’t need to fight in the first place.
One could say the same thing in this case as well. Notwithstanding Trump’s litany of grievances with Tehran, the threat Iran poses to US interests in the region is questionable at best. Yes, Iran’s stockpile of short and medium-range ballistic missiles could strike US military targets in the Persian Gulf, but this has been the case for years and will remain so for as long as American presidents believe putting tens of thousands of troops into the Middle East is a smart move.
Yes, Iran still possesses highly enriched uranium, but last June’s air attack buried this materiel underground and the Iranians haven’t retrieved it yet. The Iranians also haven’t rebuilt their nuclear program other than plugging some of the tunnel shafts and bolstering some of the facilities’ defenses. Iran’s conventional military power wasn’t much of a threat either – its air force is antiquated, its navy depends on small fast-boats and its ground troops haven’t fought a conflict since the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s.
And we can’t forget that the American people weren’t exactly gung-ho about fighting Iran. One poll last month found that 70 per cent of voters opposed U.S. military action in Iran, including 53 per cent of Republicans. The fundamental question therefore looms like a shadow over all of this: why, at this particular time, despite having “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear program last summer, did Trump feel compelled to launch an even larger military campaign?
The days ahead will be tense. Outside of Israel, no country in the region wanted this war to break out. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates went so far as to refuse to allow the United States to use bases in their countries to attack Iran and even communicated this to the Iranians. At the time of writing, the U.S. Navy’s regional headquarters in Bahrain has been hit, air raid sirens have flared in Kuwait and Iranians have sent drones and missiles towards Israel.
Meanwhile, Trump is planning for days of additional strikes and hoping it all goes according to plan.
Comments