Donald Trump took the greatest bet of his four and a half years combined in the White House on Saturday evening by hitting Iran and joining the War of Israel against the Islamic Republic.
Trump’s main bet is that Iran and its proxies in the Middle East were so weakened that the American president can launch his intervention that is both limited and successful. It is also a bet that an intimidated teheran will quickly seek a regulation rather than to retaliate.
If Trump is right, he will have achieved an objective of American foreign policy covering several administrations – the elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat – and did it at a relatively low cost.
But this decision includes the enormous risk of igniting the Middle East-compromising the security of the United States and Israel and turning against a president who had promised not to attract America to new world conflicts.
“It all depends on how the Iranian regime reacts – and it is not clear what are the capacities and the will of the regime. [But] The Iranian network of the region remains fatally fatal, and it is able to sow more instability and terror if it chooses it, “said Brian Katulis, principal researcher at the Middle East Institute, a Washington reflection group.
Trump had spent a large part of his presidential campaign in 2024, arguing that he would be a peacemaker in his second mandate, resolving world conflicts rather than merging new ones.
But the president, under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saw a strike against Iran both as an opportunity to seize, and a chance to obtain an inheritance as a leader willing to exercise American military power.
Trump seemed to savor his insulationist in heat on Saturday. The president put on a red cap “Make America Great Again” while he gathered with the best aids in the White House situation room. During his speech after strikes, he warned that he was ready to extend the military campaign against Iran, if necessary.
“There will either be peace or there will be a tragedy for Iran much greater than what we have witnessed in the past eight days,” said Trump. “Don’t forget, there are many targets left … But if peace does not come quickly, we will continue these other targets with precision, speed and skills.”
Iran has always been an exception to Trump’s non -interventionist mantra. At the beginning of 2020, towards the end of his first mandate, he launched a military operation with high issues to assassinate the Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.
“If the Americans are threatened, we have all these targets already completely identified, and I am ready and ready to take all the necessary measures. And this, in particular, refers to Iran,” said Trump at the time.
During his visit last month in the Gulf region, the American president had issued another clear warning to Tehran. “We want them to be a wonderful, safe and large country, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” said Trump. “This is an offer that will not last forever.”
These public warnings in Tehran were considerably intensified during last week, when he started early from a G7 summit in Canada to examine strikes against Iran. On Thursday, its suggestion that the Islamic Republic had two more weeks to bow to the American requests turned out to be short -lived.
Dana Stroul, former deputy deputy secretary of defense for the Middle East, now at the Washington Institute for the Middle East policy, said that Trump’s bellicose change on Iran was in contradiction with his previous position on foreign policy.
“Trump has repeatedly expressed his preference for diplomacy, his desire to conclude an agreement and his desire to be judged by the wars that the United States does not enter,” she said.
“And here we are, five months from the second administration, and he entered the United States in direct conflict with Iran, in the absence of a serious articulation for the American people on the image of intelligence, in the absence of serious commitment with the Congress …
Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland democratic senator, expressed his anger, reporting the type of internal attacks that Trump can wait in the coming days.
“The war in Iraq was also launched under false pretexts,” said Van Hollen. “The United States rightly supported the defense of Israel, but it should not have joined Netanyahu to wage this war of choice.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat deputy in New York, called for the dismissal of Trump for taking military measures without the authorization of the US Congress. The member of the Republican Congress Thomas Massie wrote on Trump’s decision to attack: “It is not constitutional.”
But some other Republican legislators welcomed this decision.
“The decisive action of the president prevents the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world, which sings” death in America “, of obtaining the most deadly weapon on the planet. This is the first policy in America in action,” said the president of the representatives of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.
Trump’s action against Iran came with 51% of Americans disapproving of its performance in office, and 46.9% approving, according to the average realclearpolitics.com.
Aaron David Miller, a former negotiator of the American State Department in the Middle East now in the Endowment for International Peace Carnegie, said Trump had “a lot of politically margin” to continue fighting, especially if Iran retaliated.
But he also warned that the window may not be opened for a long time, especially if the war widen or triggered a new energy crisis. “How would it play with death with the Americans and the oil price of more than $ 100 per barrel, is another matter.”
Jack Reed, the best democrat of the Senate armed services committee, said another way: “It was a massive bet of President Trump, and no one knows if it will be paying.”
