How does it end?
The same question that was once asked about Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is now clouding the endgame of the new US war with Iran.
Since the end of World War II, the US has proven better at starting wars than finishing them. So the absence of any clear plan for how to fill the vacuum left by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s killing is a cause for concern.
“We will finish this on ‘America first’ conditions of President Trump’s choosing,” Trump’s bombastic Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week, while lambasting European nations who oppose the war as unreliable allies "who wring their hands and clutch their pearls.”
His comment struck some as an example of the administration’s hubris, and it recalled a fateful remark made by President George W. Bush days after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. “This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing,” Bush said, shortly before launching US wars that dragged on for the best part of two decades.
Nearly a week into the combined US-Israeli onslaught, it seems possible that the offensive will achieve the goal of destroying Iran’s navy; what’s left of its nuclear program; and its capacity to launch missiles and drones into the region. At that point, Trump — who likes a quick, clean victory — may pack up and come home, whatever the mess he leaves in his wake.
The president still hopes that Iranians could make good on what he calls a once in a generation effort to overthrow their theocratic dictatorship. This would be the best result for everyone. But it relies on the courage of young Iranians risking death at the hands of hardline security forces, who may be more — not less — willing to shoot now that Khamenei has been killed.
Any hope Trump has gamed out what's next is undermined by the morass of rationales that his White House cited to justify the war in the first place. To begin with it was regime change; then it was an unverified claim that Tehran was about to strike the US.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington acted because it knew Israel was going to bomb and wanted to protect US troops. Then Trump contradicted him amid criticism that he’d let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoodwink him into a war against US interests.
But Tehran’s extremists have their own definition of victory: The survival of the Islamic Republic in any form. It might lose its ability to project fear and mayhem in the Middle East, but it would have defied the “Great Satan” — the United States.
The longer the bombing goes on, the more the political costs will rise. Oil prices are ticking up; stock prices are tumbling; and there could soon be shortages of liquified natural gas, which is especially vital to European and Asian economies. Iranian drone and missile attacks on the glistening new cities of the Gulf — the showpieces of a shift from oil-reliant economies to tourism — threaten to cause even more damaging economic fallout.
A descent into chaos and anarchy in Iran would be a disaster for a region still dealing with the implosion of Syria and would threaten a new refugee influx into Europe. This is one reason why a reported US plan to arm Kurds to challenge the remnants of the Tehran regime seems more like a recipe to stoke nationalism and a civil war than lasting stability.
So far, in the United States, Trump only seems to have created another issue on which Americans doubt his leadership — ahead of midterm elections in November that were already looking very difficult for his Republican Party.
The administration has said the war could last weeks. But don’t be surprised if Trump starts looking for an off-ramp soon.
