Iran Will Try to Impose Political Costs on Trump
Overnight, Israel conducted an astonishing unilateral attack on Iran, striking military facilities across the country and killing several military commanders by targeting their apartments in Tehran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that Iran’s nuclear programme posed a "clear and present danger to Israel's very survival.” This was the pretense for an operation Netanyahu has long wanted to undertake.
Just last month, the Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director for National Intelligence, testified that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and that the Supreme Leader “has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” The US and Iran have also been engaged in intensive nuclear negotiations. As part of these talks, Iran had made clear it was willing to accept strict verification and monitoring of its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The negotiations had recently gained momentum—Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was slated to meet US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Oman on Sunday.
Oman’s Foreign Minister, Badr Albusaidi, who is acting as the mediator for the US-Iran negotiations, has condemned Israeli’s attack as “illegal, unjustifiable and a grave threat to regional stability” and has called on the international community to “reject Israeli aggression and support de-escalation and diplomacy with one voice.” Israel’s attack was clearly intended to undermine diplomacy.
Iran now faces a harrowing decision. It lacks the conventional means to respond to Israel decisively and to re-establish deterrence—an Iranian response will beget further Israeli strikes. By taking unilateral action against Iran, Netanyahu has already made clear that he is eager for war, and he believes that he has what military planners call “escalation dominance.”
Last April, Iran was able to demonstrate that its ballistic missiles can penetrate Israeli air defences. But a proportional response to the Israeli attack—which included strikes on residential neighbourhoods and led to civilian causalities—will increase the likelihood that the US is drawn into the conflict.
Faced with this dilemma, many senior leaders in Iran will call for Iran to change its nuclear doctrine and finally build a nuclear weapon. If the country’s most fortified enrichment facility, Fordow, remains operational during the attacks, Iran can likely enrich enough uranium for several bombs in a matter of weeks. A crude weapon system could be developed and tested by the end of the year. In other words, Iran could finally and fatefully dash for the bomb.
This may be what Israel wants. Iran will not be able to weaponise in secret—the expulsion of IAEA inspectors and the dispersal of personnel and equipment to new nuclear sites will be clear signs of a change in Iran’s nuclear doctrine. Netanyahu will be able to turn to Trump and provide decisive evidence of Iranian weaponisation, spinning it as a betrayal of what Trump believes to have been an earnest effort at diplomacy.
What happens next is difficult to predict. Iran cannot win a war against the US and Israel and so weaponisation is an enormous gamble. But absent a nuclear deterrent, Iran will remain vulnerable to continued attacks as Israel will remain unrestrained. Iran’s best hope may be to turn the instability in the region into a political liability for Trump, compelling him to restrain Netanyahu. Iran may therefore respond to the Israeli attacks by externalising the damage, creating chaos for the global economy
During the first Trump term, Iran responded to U.S. “maximum pressure” by striking energy infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia through its proxies. A sustained campaign of such attacks would see global oil prices skyrocket, undermining Trump’s domestic agenda. Already, Trump’s continued acquiescence to Netanyahu has angered his MAGA base, which elected him largely because of his repudiation of US involvement in costly and misguided wars in the Middle East. On the eve of the Israeli attack, figures such as Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, and Marjorie Taylor Green warned Trump against getting embroiled in a new war. In a newsletter published the morning after the attack, Tucker Carlson declared that Trump should “drop Israel” and that Israel’s conflict with Iran is “not America’s fight.”
Militarily, Iran will struggle to respond to Israeli aggression, but politically, Iranian leaders retain some room for manoeuvre. After nearly two decades of joint exercises and planning for a US-Israel strike on Iran’s nuclear program, Israel acted alone. This reflects the political shift that has taken place in Washington under Trump, where the hawkish “neocons” have been on the back foot. Netanyahu is the ultimate neocon. It is not clear that he can survive if Trump turns on him. That remains the best hope for Iran and the region.
Photo: IRNA
