By Matt Spetalnick, Andrea Shalal and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – With his large-scale attack on Iran, Donald Trump has seized a legacy-defining moment to demonstrate his readiness to exercise raw U.S. military power. But in doing so, he is also taking the biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency, one fraught with risks and unknowns.
Trump joined with Israel to plunge into war against Iran, and after a day of air strikes announced on Saturday that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed, which would mark a major achievement for the operation but also leave unanswered questions about the future of the Islamic Republic.
Even as the crisis unfolded on Saturday, Trump provided little explanation to the American public for what could become the biggest U.S. military campaign since Afghanistan and Iraq.
He has pivoted away from a preference for swift, limited operations like last month’s lightning raid in Venezuela to what experts warn could be a more protracted conflict with Iran that risks escalating into a regional conflagration engulfing the oil-rich Middle East.
The president, who came to office last year promising to avoid “stupid wars,” has also set out a daunting objective of regime change in Tehran, pushing the idea that air strikes can incite a popular uprising to oust Iran’s rulers.
It is an outcome that outside air power has never directly achieved in other conflicts without the involvement of an armed force on the ground, and which most analysts doubt will succeed this time in Iran.
Though Khamenei’s death, if confirmed by Iran, would deal a major blow to the country he has led since 1989, it would not necessarily spell the end of the Iran’s entrenched clerical rule or the Revolutionary Guards’ sway over the population.
“Most Americans will wake up Saturday morning and wonder why we are at war with Iran, what is the goal, and why U.S. bases in the Middle East are under attack,” said Daniel Shapiro, a former senior Pentagon official and U.S. ambassador to Israel who is now at the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington.
Trump’s fixation on Iran has emerged as the starkest example yet of how foreign policy, including his expanded use of military might, has topped his agenda in the first 13 months of his second term, often overshadowing domestic issues like the cost of living that public opinion polls show are much higher priorities for most Americans.
His own aides have been privately urging him for weeks to focus more on voters’ economic worries, highlighting the political dangers ahead of November’s midterm elections in which Trump’s Republican Party is at risk of losing one or both chambers of Congress.
The brief pre-dawn video that Trump posted on his Truth Social platform announcing what the Pentagon has dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” provided only broad reasons for going to war now with a country the U.S. has jousted with for decades while averting all-out hostilities.
He insisted he would end what he said was Tehran’s ballistic missile threat – which most experts say does not pose a threat to the U.S. – and give Iranians a chance to topple their rulers.
Trump said that to accomplish his goals U.S. forces would lay waste to much of Iran’s military as well as deny it the ability to have a nuclear weapon. Iran denies that its nuclear program has military aims.
DASHING HOPES FOR DIPLOMACY
Trump’s sudden resort to force, using huge U.S. military assets built up in the region in recent weeks, appeared certain to close the door for now on diplomacy with Iran. Nuclear talks in Geneva on Thursday failed to achieve a breakthrough.
Some Trump aides have previously suggested that he might be able to bomb Tehran back to the table to force deep concessions.
Instead, Iran responded by launching missiles at Israel and several Gulf Arab oil-producing states that host American bases.
Trump’s focus in the video on the urgency of the threat posed by Iran’s ballistic and nuclear programs had echoes of the case President George W. Bush made for war against Iraq in 2003, which later turned out to be based on faulty intelligence and false claims.
Trump’s assertion in Tuesday’s State of the Union address that Iran will soon have a missile that can hit the United States is not backed by U.S. intelligence reports, according to sources familiar with the assessments, and experts have also cast doubt on his aides’ recent claims of Tehran’s ability to quickly advance its nuclear capabilities.
With Saturday’s strikes, Trump, who had originally threatened to strike Iran in January in support of street protesters facing a violent crackdown, also erased all doubt that part of what he seeks now is regime change in Tehran.
But analysts question whether Trump, who has ruled out deploying U.S. troops on the ground, has a strategy that could unseat Iran’s longtime cleric-dominated government, which has proved resilient in the face of crippling sanctions and periodic mass protests.
The first wave of strikes mainly targeted Iranian leaders, including Khamenei, a staunch foe of the West who had ruled with an iron grip.
As reports of the supreme leader’s death spread, Trump posted that “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” He credited intelligence and tracking systems for leading to the killing of Khamenei and other leaders who were with him, and urged other officials to accept immunity or face death.
There was no immediate confirmation from Tehran, where Iranian news agencies reported earlier that Khamenei was “steadfast and firm in commanding the field.”
The Israeli military listed at least seven senior officials and commanders it said had been killed.
Analysts warned that eliminating top leaders could have the unintended consequences of sowing chaos across a sprawling nation of 93 million or lead to a hardline military-run government that might be even more intransigent with the West and oppressive to its people, analysts said.
“He wants to change the government,” said Jon Alterman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington. “But it’s hard to change the government from the air. It’s hard to change the minds of Iranians through the air.”
Tyson Barker, a former senior U.S. official who is now with the Atlantic Council, said Trump’s call for the Iranian people to rise up was also not likely to work.
“They’re really exposing these poor Iranian people by saying, ‘Stand up and overthrow your government. We got your back’,” Barker said.
APPETITE FOR MILITARY RISK
Trump’s appetite for foreign military operations has grown since the start of his second term.
He appears to have been emboldened by the U.S. bombing of Iran’s main nuclear facilities in June and the in-and-out raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and has given the U.S. considerable sway over the OPEC country’s vast oil reserves.
Trump may have forced his own hand with Iran with his frequent threats of military action while building up a huge naval force that he could not sustain indefinitely in the region.
Analysts see Iran as a much tougher, better-armed foe than Venezuela, even though its air defenses and missile capabilities were severely degraded in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes in June.
But Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit research institute considered pro-Israel and hawkish on Iran, said Tehran is in such a weakened state that it is worth Trump taking the risks to curb Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Whether or not the Iranian government falls, he said severely degrading Iran’s nuclear and missile programs could be a victory for Trump.
(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick, Andrea Shalal and Idrees Ali; additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, writing by Matt SpetalnickEditing by Ross Colvin, Peter Graff and Cynthia Osterman)
Comments