Bombs Over Tehran

The logic—and unanswered questions—of Trump's war against Iran.

This week’s big news is the massive and ongoing U.S.-Israel airstrikes on Iran, which have so far wiped out the country’s top leadership and placed the remnants of the regime under immense strain. But America’s action here raises the question: Is this a regime change war? Or is this something else? Where do things go from here?

We are not at the level of a regime-change war, at least at this stage. I say that for a simple reason: President Trump has shown a pattern of projecting tactical force against America’s enemies in a precise manner that doesn’t involve long-term entanglements. We saw this with the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Trump’s first term, and more recently with the capture of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela this term.

To be sure, the theory of these strikes is that this is something that is bigger in scale than, say, Venezuela. There are legitimate concerns that when one wipes out a country’s entire leadership without an explicit plan for moving forward, such a situation might quickly spiral out of control. Will Iran respond in a way that baits the United States into further action? Do we get a Gulf of Tonkin-style incident that eventually results in boots on the ground? I’m worried about these possibilities because like many Americans, I do not want a serious, long-term ground war between the U.S. and Iran.