President Donald Trump said during his campaign in 2024 for the president that America had fought “no wars” during his first presidency, and that he was the first president in 72 years which could say it.
It was notStrictly speaking, true. In his first mandate, Trump intensified the Air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ordered air strikes against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad in response to the use of chemical weapons and increased Reverse campaign that is not invoked in Somalia. But in these cases, Trump could say, with a certain justification, that he was just facing the purne crises he had inherited from Barack Obama.
Likewise, the president said on several occasions that the wars of Gaza and Ukraine would never have arrived if they had been presidents when they broke out, rather than Joe Biden. It is a counterfactual which is impossible to prove, and it Perhaps too optimistic In his promises to quickly negotiate the end of these two conflicts, but it is fair to say that the two are the wars that Trump inherited rather than choosing.
This time, it’s different. This time, it’s Trump’s war.
Saturday evening, the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran in Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan, End of speculation weeks On the question of whether the American army would join the Israeli war against Iran which started more than a week ago.
The last days in Washington felt a bit like the battles on intelligence in the contribution of war in Iraq, but take place quickly. Rather than putting pressure on the intelligence agencies to justify his favorite line of driving, Trump simply replaced them. Rather than building a case before Congress And the UN for the need to act, he simply ignored them.
Trump argued that Iran brought the attack on itself By not concluding the agreement he offered, but the negotiations continued when Trump abandoned the diplomatic path. Trump approved the Israeli evaluation that war was necessary because new information has shown that Iran was “very close to having a weapon”. But that contradicts the very recent declarations of his own intelligence agencies and national intelligence director. According to the report of the Wall Street Journal, those responsible for these agencies were not convinced According to new evidence of Israel that something dramatic had changed in the Iranian nuclear program. It also contradicts Trump’s own statements earlier this month when he Publicly discouraged Israel From the attack on Iran, saying that it would derail his efforts to negotiate a new nuclear agreement.
It is difficult to overestimate how fast the policy of the Trump administration has changed. Barely a month ago, Trump seemed to give Netanyahu government the cold shoulderContinuing direct diplomacy with the firmer enemies of Israel – including Iran – and laughing at the Gulf governments which clearly had no appetite for a new war.
Now Trump has not only approved Netanyahu’s war; He joined him and boasted in his brief declaration of the White House on Saturday that the two had worked as a team like “maybe no team has ever worked before”. He finished his speech with “God bless Israel” with “God bless America”.
Tonight was also a major blow for those who the rightAs well as some on the left, who hoped that the Trump administration would inaugurate is a new era of military restraint or a change of priorities far from the Middle East towards China. (The United States has now moved military assets Since Asia for this war.)
There are still a lot of things that we don’t know, but it’s just to say that it is a war of choice of Trump.
Trump’s extraordinary bet
In his declaration of the White House on Saturday evening, Trump said that the operation had been a “spectacular military success” and that the enrichment facilities had been “completely erased”. For the moment, we have no corroborating evidence of this.
Israel had above all avoided hitting these sites itself. Only the United States has the powerful “Bunker Buster” GBU-57 bombs which can destroy Iran’s safest nuclear sites, in particular the installation of underground enrichment of uranium in Fordow, and only the United States has the plane that can transport them.
US officials told New York Times that the American bombers had abandoned A dozen bunker busters On Fordow on Saturday. Many experts believe that the installation would be difficult to destroy and require several strikesEven with these bombs. Doubt whether the Fordow could be destroyed would have been a reason Why Trump hesitated to order these strikes.
In his statement, Trump also suggested that it was a punctual operation for the moment. Speaking of the pilots who abandoned the bombs, Trump said: “I hope we no longer need their services in this respect”, but also threatened that if Iran “did not make peace”, then “future attacks will be much greater and much easier”. He added: “There are many targets left.”
Hope seems to be that Iran will now be forced to conclude an agreement to completely abandon its nuclear program. But an Iranian regime attentive to its own legitimacy is also likely to retaliate in one form or another, perhaps targeting some of the big 40,000 American troops deployed Around the Middle East.
Hope may be that it will be Stri-for-tat limited strikes as those who followed the American assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, although subsequent evaluations have revealed that these Attacks have done more damage that it was initially thought out and could easily have killed many more American troops.
Anyway, the Iranian diet is much more desperate now, and once the missiles are starting to fly, it could be very easy for things to become uncontrollable.
If Iran has an infrastructure of remaining enrichment, either on these sites or hidden elsewhere throughout the country, the country’s leaders can now feel much less hesitant to rush to build a bomb. Iranian leaders had been preferred to remain a “threshold nuclear state” for a long time – working towards a bomb without building one. From this point of view, they thought that their growing capacity to build a weapon gave them a lever effect, while not trying to build an intervention of us and Israeli avoided. This logic is now obsolete.
It is not clear either that Israel simply wants the nuclear concessions of the Iranian regime. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that new information on Iran’s nuclear capacity was the reason to start this war, he was clear both of the Israeli government rhetoric and choice of targets that It is a war against the Islamic Republic itself, and this change of regime can be the ultimate goal. Trump did not mention the change of regime in his declaration, but he has now committed American military power to this Israeli war.
Until now, this war has been characterized by superb Israeli tactical successes, as well as by the apparent helplessness of Iran and its network formerly praised by regional proxies in its response. (Although it is Shortly how long the air defense system of Israel can follow if the Iranian strikes continue at this rate.) It may have embraced a president who has withdrawn actions like this in the pastTo convince him that the strike of the Iranian nuclear program would now be effective and that the return of flame would be manageable.
It is quite a bet – and this time, there will be no one else to blame if it does not go as planned.