The Trump administration's Iran strategy operates on a framework where both possible outcomes of the U.S.-Israeli air campaign result in an American advantage, a former senior Pentagon official has argued.
Douglas J. Feith outlined this dual-outcome logic in The Washington Post, as reported by "Hvylya".
The first outcome, Feith writes, is that the Iranian people do what Trump has publicly called for: "oust the current regime and create a new one." History says this is a long shot - air campaigns have almost never produced regime change - but if it works, Trump "will praise himself as a strategic genius, and his political opponents will have a hard time contradicting him."
The second outcome - no popular revolution - also has its own branching logic. With Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, navy, air force, air defenses, missile capabilities, and nuclear weapons program destroyed, whatever leadership emerges will have "far less power to harm their neighbors or the United States." Those new leaders then face their own binary choice: seek American cooperation to rejoin the world economy, in which case Trump "could then impose conditions and declare victory," or remain hostile - but drastically weakened.
Feith compares the cooperative scenario to Trump's arrangement with Venezuela's Delcy Rodriguez after the U.S. capture of Nicolas Maduro. The hostile scenario, meanwhile, leaves Washington with the option to "hit them again" - this time against a far weaker adversary.
The framework has a notable gap, however. If Iran disintegrates into civil war rather than following either clean path, millions could flee toward Europe and America, as happened in Syria. But Feith argues it would be equally risky "to try to play a major role on the ground in Iran to avoid that not-inevitable result." Trump, he writes, is simply choosing which set of risks he prefers to face.
Also read: Netanyahu Wants Regime Change, Trump Wants an Off-Ramp: The Clash That Will Define Iran's Future