Can the U.S. Avoid War with Iran?

A war with Iran would be a disaster for President Trump and the United States. Yet can the President avoid the diplomatic failures of the past?

Since President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, colloquially known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, the administration has struggled to develop a coherent policy relating to Iran’s potential nuclear ambitions. Iran, despite drastically increasing its reserves of enriched uranium, would need to assemble a bomb without detection from Israeli or U.S. intelligence. Still, though, the mere possibility that Tehran could enter the nuclear guard is an existential threat to Israel, which has pushed both the Biden and Trump administrations to engage in pre-emptive strikes to dismantle the Iranian nuclear program. Pursuing such force, however, will bring the exact type of “forever war” that President Trump has long derided. The lives of American service members, the ability of the U.S. military to deter and defend against a growing number of threats, and President Trump’s promise to end our current global chaos ride on making a sustainable deal with Iran.

The first step to striking a sustainable and successful deal with Iran is understanding the limits of restricting the nuclear program wholesale. The Trump administration has shown a commendable ability, particularly in the Russia-Ukraine war, in understanding that our multipolar world prevents the United States from dictating the terms of negotiations completely. Those who have pushed for President Trump to pursue the “Libya model,” or pushing for complete denuclearization in both civilian and military capacities, are following the same irrational logic that brought the United States into the Middle East over two decades ago. Iran’s newfound weakness following the destruction of regional allies like Hezbollah and Hamas indeed makes it less, not more, likely that a full-scale denuclearization is possible. The risk of full-scale denuclearization being followed by an Israeli-led, U.S.-backed conflict to pursue regime change is too great for Tehran to accept such terms.

While President Trump may not desire war with Iran, he also clearly is willing to threaten the country with military action should talks fail. The President’s promise that Iran will suffer a “very bad day” may suggest that complete denuclearization is the sole objective of the United States. If Iran rejects these parameters, in President Trump’s mind, it may be seen as disrespect to his administration and disinterest in striking a deal. This is a dangerous assumption that will open the door to direct military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and in turn close the door on any hope of mediation on this critical issue. Such military action would drag the United States into the exact type of prolonged conflict with undefined goals that this administration campaigned against in Ukraine. Even if the United States was successful in destroying every Iranian nuclear facility before Iran assembled a bomb, which is far from guaranteed, there would remain an Iranian regime with the potential to covertly rebuild its nuclear infrastructure. This moves the goalposts, just as the failed wars of the early twenty-first century did, into talk of nation-building and regime change.

Unlike the disastrous wars pursued under the Bush administration, the United States now has to address a revisionist Russia and resurgent China, both intent on dethroning the United States and willing to exercise force to do so. Our actions in the Middle East do not exist in a vacuum, and our conventional strength against the Iranian military does not mean that Tehran could not inflict serious damage on our military. An already gutted war reserve, meant to ensure the United States can always defend against an attack on our homeland, would be further emptied not only against Iran but also against Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels, all of whom would escalate targeting U.S. military targets in the region. Israel would face the brunt of Iranian attacks, requiring additional THAAD deployments to intercept these inbound missiles.

The willingness of the Trump administration to break established international norms can be used to the United States’ advantage in adjudicating a fair and honest deal with Iran. Firstly, the United States must enter negotiations with the sole goal of advancing the security and safety of Americans. While Israelis would ultimately benefit from achieving a nuclear-free Iran without bloodshed, Prime Minister Netanyahu would not. The Prime Minister has already considered striking enrichment facilities and has reiterated that he does not believe Iran can be negotiated with. Including such an actor in the negotiation process, whether directly or indirectly, is antithetical to resolving this crisis. “America First” cannot solely be applied to Eastern Europe; it must be applied writ large no matter the adversary or ally.

President Trump’s belief that the original JCPOA deal allowed for Iran to fund its axis of terror must be addressed in order for any deal to be realistically achieved. Additionally, it is unlikely that a deal can be achieved without at least the goal of complete denuclearization down the line. President Trump is unlikely to agree to any deal that ignores these dual realities, both of which allow for the Trump administration to claim a new deal is an improvement over the original. The United States must, in this case, widen the scale of any prospective deal with Iran to address the fundamental tensions intrinsic to the current relationship. Just as the Trump administration has pursued issues of mutual benefit with Russia, the President can forge a new future of U.S.-Iran relations by stepping back from predefined notions of adversary and allies. This does not mean signing a security guarantee with Iran or inviting the Ayatollah to the Rose Garden, but it can mean re-evaluating our belief that our relationship with Tehran is unchangeable.

It is undeniable that Iran funds, dictates, and benefits from the actions of terrorist organizations across the region. Houthi rebels have disrupted global commerce and evaded eradication even with consistent U.S. strikes through both the Biden and Trump administrations. Hezbollah and Hamas have endangered U.S. forces across the region and, of course, attacked a critical ally in Israel. The rhetoric from hawkish officials in the White House linking these groups to Iran is, somewhat glibly, attempting to argue that by cutting off the head of the snake—in this case, Iran—the body, in this case the aforementioned terror cells, will die. This logic, though, can just as easily be used to argue for full-scale diplomacy rather than full-scale war. If we can establish some level of relationship with Iran, we will have far more influence in fighting these terrorist groups.

Assuming that Iran backs these groups to advance some national security goal, rather than a cartoonish evilness that cannot be reasoned with, then there is therefore a way to pressure Tehran out of supporting these terrorist organizations. Iran supports these groups to insulate itself from the threat of Israeli or American action domestically. If Iran can be convinced that the United States is not intent on its destruction, and that Israel can therefore be restrained, it will offer the opportunity to destroy or significantly weaken these terrorist cells. Such action cannot happen overnight, and until the relationship between Washington and Tehran is built on some level of mutual trust, these organizations will continue to sporadically disrupt regional security. It may very well be possible that the investment needed to convince Iran to stop supporting these groups is simply too high for the United States to reasonably offer, which would once again redefine our strategic goals toward accepting the status quo established over the last four decades. Not trying, however, to establish a new and powerful peace is a strategic mistake for the United States that will fail to address the structural reasons Iran is pursuing a bomb in the first place.

Such a dramatic redefinition of a historically adversarial relationship can seem naive initially, but if any President were to usher in such a transition, it would be President Trump. The President has shown a willingness to abandon long-held tensions with despotic regimes, such as the series of summits with Kim Jong Un during President Trump’s first term. Similarly, despite the tough talk emanating from the White House around Iran, the administration has shown an ability to rhetorically pivot on international affairs without domestic backlash. Before President Trump crossed the DMZ and entered the Hermit Kingdom, he was threatening the nation with his “big red button” and openly considering striking North Korean silos preemptively. Failure to translate the friendliness between the U.S. and North Korea into substantive policy failed in fact due to pressure from hawkish national security officials to pursue the aforementioned “Libya model,” which, of course, was a nonstarter for North Korean leadership.

Forcing the United States into rigid, predefined acceptable outcomes before negotiations commence prevents the ability to engage in these critical negotiations holistically. While I am arguing for a full-throated pursuit of diplomacy, I can also acknowledge, and have written previously, that Iran assembling a nuclear bomb is rightly unacceptable for the United States, Israel, and the Middle East as a whole. I am clear-eyed that a more productive relationship may be impossible, at least with Ayatollah Khamenei in power. Yet to assume that the United States’ historical relationship with any actor—whether it be Europe, Iran, or North Korea—is a predictor of the future is reductive at best and harmful at worst.

We now stand at a crossroads that will define the President and his promise of peace for decades to come. War with Iran does not put America first, but instead adds yet another regional war that will shed more American blood in a region too familiar with the notion. Diplomacy that eschews not just Iran’s nuclear ambitions but attempts to create an unbreakable peace in a region beset by just the opposite should become the foremost goal for the current administration. With so much violence already destroying our world, and with the links of international diplomacy looking ever weaker, the United States must act with extreme caution before furthering our collective spiral towards calamity.