Trump faces a pivotal moment: Capitalize on Iran’s unprecedented weakness by supporting Israel, avoiding overreach, and building bipartisan backing, or risk squandering a rare strategic advantage.
Tehran and its terrorist proxies are now weakened beyond the wildest dreams of US leaders. The clerical regime that rules Tehran, and the terror groups it abets, have been knocked back by Israeli and American military actions to the greatest ever extent since the regime’s birth in 1979. A crucial question remains, however: whether Washington will leverage its good fortune vis-à-vis Tehran, or blunder its way into allowing Iran to regain its strategic footing.
To ensure the former, President Trump needs to define the long-term US goal with Iran, maintain pressure on the regime to reach that goal, stand by Israel as it continues to protect itself from a genocide-seeking regime, avoid “mission creep” in the aftermath of success, and work to build bipartisan support at home for his efforts.
For decades, foreign policy experts have warned that the most significant danger to global peace would be an Iran, long the world’s most aggressive state sponsor of terrorism, armed with nuclear weapons that it could threaten to use itself or provide to one or more of the terrorist proxies in its “Axis of Resistance.”
Those weapons would give Tehran greater immunity to advance its ballistic missile program; expand its conventional forces; export its revolutionary ideology; deploy its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at home and abroad; fund, equip, and plot attacks with its terrorist proxies; destabilize Sunni Arab nations in the region; and work with anti-Western nations around the world.
Now, Tehran’s nuclear facilities lie primarily in ruins, and many of its scientists and military leaders are dead. Meanwhile, its closest regional ally (Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad) lives in Moscow, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia is decapitated, the Palestinian Hamas movement can no longer mount a severe attack on Israel, and, in direct exchanges with Israel’s military over the last year, Iran has proved to be more a paper tiger than a serious threat.
Ironically, a theocracy that chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” in its halls of power now finds itself at the mercy of both, lacking the means to deter Washington and Jerusalem from further attacks.
In response to this new reality, recent US actions have showcased Washington at both its best and worst, raising serious questions about what its posture will be toward Israel and Iran in the days to come.
On the upside, President Trump seized the opportunity created by Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities to cripple them further, standing by the Jewish state at a critical moment and making good on the longstanding US commitment to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. On the downside, Trump chastised Jerusalem (our closest regional ally) even more harshly than Tehran (our fiercest regional adversary) for breaking a US-shaped ceasefire agreement between the two, sending a dangerous and disheartening signal to other US allies in the region and far beyond.
To make the most of the opportunity that Tehran’s weakness now presents, Trump needs to take the following five steps:
1. He should maintain US financial, diplomatic, and, if necessary, military pressure on Tehran rather than throw the besieged and vulnerable regime a lifeline. Any new agreement that Washington cuts with Tehran must prove more airtight than the flawed global nuclear deal of 2015. Further, it needs to be more expansive as well, addressing Iran’s ballistic missiles program and terrorist activities.
2. The President should not let his laudable desire for regional peace and stability blind him to renewed dangers from Tehran that could demand more military action by Jerusalem or Washington. With early indications that US and Israeli strikes damaged but did not destroy Iran’s facilities, Tehran could well decide to speedily rebuild its nuclear effort and then race for a bomb.
3. Trump should let Israel conduct the military operations it deems necessary to protect itself from renewed Iranian threats, rather than chastise the Jewish state for not maintaining what could prove a false peace over the long term. It is, after all, Israel that lives with genocidal forces on its borders and just beyond.
4. The White House needs to maintain a focused mission, that of reducing the Iranian threat, and eschew more talk of “regime change,” which will undercut support for his actions in the region, across the West, and at home. Such talk will inevitably raise the specter of, among other things, the chaotic aftermath of US regime change in Iraq in 2003.
5. Trump should seek to build bipartisan support for a focused goal of reducing Iran’s capacity to threaten the United States and its allies. Although some lawmakers on both the political Left and Right have asserted that Trump exceeded his war-making authority by not seeking prior congressional approval for US military action, others have expressed support for the action, giving Trump something on which to build.
A genocidal regime with hopes of vanquishing Israel and the United States in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, has blundered its way to unforeseen weakness, laying the groundwork for Washington to capitalize on the opportunity. US leaders must neither overreach nor grow complacent with their success.
Lawrence J. Haas is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of, among other books, Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World.