We are now in the second week of the U.S./Israel war against Iran. Our so-called Secretary of War is reluctant to call it a war—he likes his made-up title so much, his reluctance is ironic—just as Vladimir Putin avoided calling his incursion into Ukraine a war. But war this is. And perennial Nobel Peace Prize aspirant Donald Trump is largely responsible for initiating hostilities.

Of course, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also bears responsibility for this war. If Secretary of State Marco Rubio is to be believed—is anyone in this administration to be believed?—the U.S. attacked Iran because we knew that Israel was about to do so, and we didn’t want to be left out of the fun (or something like that).

Whereas U.S. presidents typically explain to American citizens why they are taking the country to war, our current president has explained little and is probably reluctant to explain to Americans because the true story is simply embarrassing. I think that Rubio’s explanation is very close to the truth. Despite Trump’s sky-is-falling rhetoric, the reality is that Iran has always been a much greater threat to Israel than to the U.S., and Netanyahu has long wanted to remove that threat. Moreover, perpetual war seems necessary to delay his corruption trial. Trump was susceptible to Netanyahu’s pleas to take out Iran because it lets him use the toys of war, which he finds increasingly satisfying. After Venezuela, he has probably concluded that any credible peace prize from anyone other than himself is beyond his grasp.

I leave it to the citizens of Israel to accept or reject Netanyahu’s role in the current war. They have calmly borne Israel’s destruction of Gaza, so I expect that his latest military action will be met with similar indifference, though that tolerance may have a sell-by date. Americans, on the other hand, have more to think about.

To begin with, there is the question of the legitimacy of the U.S. president’s taking the country to war without congressional approval. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Actually, declaring war has become something of a lost art. The last time the U.S. actually declared war was at the beginning of World War II. Congress has, at times, authorized hostilities without a declaration of war, but, in recent times, presidents have ordered our military into battle without congressional approval of any kind and without legal challenge. The Article I provision was clearly intended to be a check on the president. In the early years of the Republic, Congress either declared war or authorized military action. (The Supreme Court should take note of this should the question of unauthorized presidential action come before it.) Trump neither sought congressional approval for the Iran war nor offered a coherent justification for it. Although the administration has argued that requesting approval from Congress would have telegraphed the impending attack to Iran, the president’s rhetoric had surely primed Iranian leaders to expect the worst.

Apparently, Congress is not going to constrain the president’s warmaking in Iran anytime soon. The administration is sending mixed signals about where the war stands—we are just getting started; we have achieved our objectives; the war will end soon; this will go on for several weeks; Iranians should rise up and take control of their government. Trump’s most recent statement sounded like George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished.”

Clearly, the consequences of a U.S./Israel war on Iran were not fully considered by the American president. He should not have been surprised that Iran has fought back as though the regime is fighting for its life, which, of course, it is. (Trump may not want to fight for regime change, but Netanyahu certainly does.) Trump should have considered the simple thought experiment: what would the U.S. do if subjected to a massive air and sea attack?

Trump talks about achieving our objectives, but he has failed to clarify what those objectives are. He once expressed concern for the killing of Iranian demonstrators. But now his concern seems primarily to be degrading Iran’s ability to threaten its neighbors. He hasn’t spoken much about Iran’s nuclear program of late. (He claims to have obliterated it in an earlier attack, but no one believes that.) He has said that he will choose the next leader of Iran, apparently thinking that his escapade in Iran is analogous to his recent operation in Venezuela. It is not. I suspect that it is beginning to dawn on him that the current war may have serious political repercussions at home.

Given that Trump has gotten us into this mess, what should we do about it? Trump harbors the delusion that he can stop the war whenever he wants. But both Iran and Israel get a say in when this war ends. Iran has replaced the radical supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with his apparently equally radical son Mojtaba Khamenei, who is unlikely to have developed warm feelings for the Great Satan that would clearly like to see him dead.

I see two possible outcomes of this war. One is that Iran’s ability to endanger its neighbors is severely degraded, and the country is mostly in ruins. We appear to be approaching both developments. If the current government is left in place, however, the long-term hostility toward the West will remain, and the ongoing oppression of Iranian citizens will also persist. For a variety of reasons, Trump is likely to opt for this course of action. The war is unpopular and is causing inflation (or worse), which increases the likelihood that the GOP will suffer what Barack Obama once referred to as a shellacking in November.

The other possibility is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is overthrown and replaced by a secular “normal” government. Reluctantly, I must agree with Netanyahu that the Islamic Republic has got to go. I deplore theocracies generally, and the Iranian government provides an excellent argument for that viewpoint. (I will save my concern for Israel’s government for another day.) However desirable is this alternative, it is not at all clear how to achieve it. Eliminating the nominal leaders of Iran is insufficient to facilitate a transition to a more conventional government, as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who are legion and spread throughout the nation, are committed to protecting an Islamic state. The existence of the IRG and the lack of an organized Iranian opposition to the government mean that effectively overthrowing the government would be extraordinarily difficult. Almost certainly, it would require boots on the ground, a prospect to which Trump is surely allergic.

Both the U.S. and Israel have invested heavily in the war against Iran. If hostilities are terminated too early without regime change, will their efforts be essentially wasted? On the other hand, pursuing the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran may be a fool’s errand, an instance of throwing good money (and other resources) after bad. Netanyahu may be ready to pursue this war through to regime change, but even he may regret the necessary price to Israel and even to the world at large. Trump is unwilling to pay as large a price as Netanyahu.

As much as I would like to see the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I believe that this is an unrealistic war aim. (I assume we are unwilling to obliterate all of Iran along with its population.) Perhaps our best strategy has been offered by Frank L. Friedman. He has suggested that, if we can get a ceasefire all around, Iran will surely claim that the nation has successfully resisted the militaries of the U.S. and Israel. But, he suggests that, in what he calls the morning-after-the-morning-after, there could be serious disagreements within Iran about the costs that the militant religious radicals have imposed on the nation. Could that eventually lead to the downfall of the Islamic Republic? Maybe. Maybe not. But is there a better plan?

The bad news is that Trump is imposing impossible costs both on the U.S. and on the world at large. The good news is that Trump may have guaranteed Democratic control of the House and Senate during the final two years of his second term.

— LED, 3/12/2026

 
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