It doesn’t look like the administration is playing around, and it won’t look like that to the Iranian regime either.
Within days of taking office, Donald Trump surprised observers by entertaining the prospect of a new nuclear deal with Iran.
“It would be nice if the issues with Iran could be resolved without Israel attacking its military facilities,” the president said. He expressed his confidence that “there are ways that you can make it absolutely certain, if you make a deal,” although any guarantors of a new Iran deal would have to “verify times ten.”
Unlike his brief dalliance with his plan to remake the Gaza Strip into a seaside resort for Westerners, Trump has retained his desire to see a peaceful resolution to the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Recently, the president transmitted his proposal to Tehran via intermediaries. According to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, Iran’s response suggests there will be no recapitulation of the JCPOA any time soon.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a news conference that “Iran maintains its position that it won’t negotiate directly with the Trump administration so long as Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is in place,” Ravid’s dispatch read, “but is willing to hold indirect talks.”
The Trump administration may follow through with Iran’s overture, but the president and his staff are not content to let the diplomatic process play out indefinitely. A methodical buildup of American military forces in Iran’s neighborhood may be only part of an effort to compel Iran’s compliance by putting some teeth behind it. But the scale of the forces flooding into the region suggests that the president is not bluffing.
In the last week, the U.S. has dispatched the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier to the Middle East, where it will join the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group. There may now be as many as seven nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers at the U.S.-operated base Diego Garcia, an enclave in the Indian Ocean that plays a key role in U.S.-led operations in the Middle East. Multiple C-17 military-transport aircraft have “been tracked landing on the remote atoll, suggesting transportation of equipment, personnel, and supplies,” Sky News reported. Mid-air refueling aircraft necessary for sustained long-range operations are also reportedly positioned near the volatile region.
It doesn’t look like the administration is playing around, and it won’t look like that to the Iranian regime either.
As a result of both Israel’s systematic decimation of Iran’s network of terrorist proxies, the collapse of its ally in Syria, and the constraints imposed on the illegitimate regime in Tehran resulting from international pressure, it’s arguable that the Islamic Republic hasn’t been this exposed since the 1979 revolution. The mullahs may have no choice but to negotiate. But if the administration chooses to pull the trigger on an attack on the Iranian nuclear program, the circumstances it would confront are auspicious.
That would be a fraught operation. Its prospects for success are not entirely clear. The risk of failure is compounded by the potential for Iran to respond conventionally against the West and to activate terrorist assets inside Western societies. It could all go south. But it would not be unprecedented if the Iranian regime’s response to such a strike ends up looking more like a cosmetic attempt to save face.
Even after a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, the U.S. posture in the region will lead Tehran to conclude that America has held many of its capabilities in reserve. The Trump administration could present an ultimatum to the regime: Retaliate, and we will hit Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps sites, then we will hit Iranian military sites, then we will hit command-and-control and governmental sites, and so on. Iran may feel it has no choice to respond, but it could also prioritize regime survival instead and succumb to self-deterrence.
Public reporting suggests there is a live and contentious debate within the Trump administration over the proper course to take. Still, a window of opportunity to neutralize the Iranian nuclear program exists today, and it won’t be open forever. If little else, the administration’s forward positioning of U.S. assets gives the president options.
“We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said of Iran earlier this month. “Something is going to happen very soon. I would rather have a peace deal than the other option, but the other option will solve the problem.” Indeed, one way or the other, the Iranian nuclear issue is building toward a dramatic resolution.