{"id":20146,"date":"2026-03-15T10:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T10:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/20146\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T10:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T10:25:07","slug":"trump-is-searching-for-an-endgame-to-the-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/20146\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump is searching for an endgame to the Iran war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0After two weeks of war<\/a> with Iran, the Trump administration is being forced to temper its expectations of a swift end to the conflict, with U.S. intelligence and defense officials expressing doubt it can achieve the overthrow of Iran\u2019s government and the destruction of its nuclear program through military means.<\/p>\n

It was an outcome forewarned by analysts at the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon, who together alerted the administration to the pitfalls full-scale war with Iran would bring before President Trump decided to proceed, two U.S. officials told The Times, granted anonymity to speak candidly.<\/p>\n

Certain military goals of Operation Epic Fury laid out at the start of the war are still seen as achievable at the Pentagon, with U.S. and Israeli strikes making steady progress degrading Iran\u2019s ballistic missile infrastructure, its drone program and its navy.<\/p>\n

But a prewar U.S. intelligence assessment, that an air assault was unlikely to topple the Islamic Republic, still holds, with the intelligence community now casting doubt the assault had any more political effect than to radicalize a government already devoted to the destruction of Israel and harming the United States.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

A military procession in Tehran carries the casket of Ali Shamkhani, political advisor to Iran\u2019s last Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was also killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks. <\/p>\n

(Atta Kenare \/ AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Concern has only grown that Iran\u2019s new government will make the fateful strategic decision to build a bomb after the war, unless Trump decides to escalate the conflict with a perilous ground invasion. And the White House now contends with a new mission imperative, created by its decision to launch the war itself, of reopening the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> to vital shipping traffic that carries 20% of the world\u2019s daily oil and liquid natural gas supply.<\/p>\n

The foreign policy strategy Trump publicly laid out as his playbook for the conflict \u2014 to come down hard on the government, decapitating its leadership, and hope the remnants would seek mercy \u2014 has not worked, with Tehran looking for new ways to expand the war and maximize pain for the U.S. administration.<\/p>\n

Trump has minimized the conflict as an \u201cexcursion\u201d that would end \u201cvery soon,\u201d while also calling it a war, vowing to take the time he needs to \u201cfinish the job.\u201d He insists it will conclude whenever he decides to end it. <\/p>\n

It remains possible that a declaration from Trump that the fighting is over results in a ceasefire, as it did in June of last year, when Trump demanded an end to 12 days of war between Iran and Israel. But the Iranians have a vote, too \u2014 and senior leadership in the Islamic Republic have made plain they plan to continue fighting this time whether Trump likes it or not.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the Pentagon announced that an additional expeditionary unit of 2,500 Marines<\/a> was being deployed to the region to support the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting wars is an easy matter,\u201d Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council, wrote on social media. \u201cEnding them does not happen with a few tweets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not leave you until you admit your mistake and pay its price,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

It is a sore lesson for a president whose decade in public life has been distinguished by an exceptional ability to warp reality to his liking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe White House has created a dilemma for America: If it declares victory and ends the war, it leaves in place a weakened Iranian government with the means and renewed motivation to pursue nuclear weapons,\u201d said Reid Pauly, a professor of nuclear security and policy at Brown University. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf it presses on with the war,\u201d Pauly added, \u201cits risks the kind of mission creep that may eventually find American boots on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a news release last week, the White House said that, \u201cfrom the opening hours of this historic campaign, the objectives were clear: obliterate Iran\u2019s ballistic missile arsenal and production capacity, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies, and ensure the world\u2019s leading state sponsor of terrorism will never acquire a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, at the start of the operation, Trump issued a promise to the people of Iran that, at the end of the U.S.-Israeli campaign, Iran\u2019s military and paramilitary infrastructure would be so badly hobbled that a rare, generational opportunity would emerge for them to take their government back.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,\u201d Trump said. \u201cStay sheltered. Don\u2019t leave your home. It\u2019s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump insisted in the days that followed he would need to have a say over the next ruler, after assassinating the country\u2019s longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the Iranian system of clerics and militants defied the president, selecting in Khamenei\u2019s son a man viewed as even more hostile to the West than his father was.<\/p>\n

Israeli leadership, too, set out regime change as a goal of the war. Yet even their officials now say that a substantial leadership change in Tehran is an unlikely result.<\/p>\n

Trump would go on to insist on the \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d from the Iranian government, a demand that he later said would be satisfied by the incapacitation of Iran\u2019s military. <\/p>\n

Repeating his conviction that the war will end soon, Trump told Fox News\u2019 Brian Kilmeade in an interview Friday<\/a> that he would order an end to the fighting \u201cwhen I feel it. When I feel it in my bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with the administration\u2019s approach is that it has constantly shifted its goals. Some are achievable, such as degrading Iran\u2019s conventional force. Others are not, such as picking the next leader of Iran,\u201d said Ray Takeyh, a scholar on Iran at the Council on Foreign Relations. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe mixed messages have led to confusion at home,\u201d Takeyh added, \u201cand lack of planning for oil shortages and getting the Americans out of the region shows that process and personnel can actually matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign was always designed to unfold in three phases: degrading Iran\u2019s ability to wage war, reducing Iran\u2019s ability to repress democratic forces inside the country, and finally, encouraging the Iranian people to rise up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president controls the strategy, but no president fully controls the endgame because the regime gets a vote,\u201d Dubowitz said. \u201cThe endgame is not a scripted political transition directed from Washington. It is a regime under simultaneous military, economic, and internal pressure \u2014 to strip of its war-making and repression capabilities \u2014 and whether that produces succession, fracture, or collapse will ultimately be decided in Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether the conflict will achieve the destruction of Iran\u2019s nuclear program is an equally grave question in Washington, where officials are debating about a list of stark options on how to physically destroy, bury or retrieve the fissile material that Tehran could use to build a nuclear weapon \u2014 a threat seen as only more grave under the stewardship of an angry and vengeful government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war was publicly justified, to the extent it was justified at all, in terms of destroying Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Very few strikes have been directed against nuclear-related targets, however \u2014 almost certainly because those that survived last June\u2019s attacks are invulnerable to air attack,\u201d said James Acton, co\u2011director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnless the U.S. and Israel attempt high-risk special forces operations or a ground incursion,\u201d he added, \u201cIran will end the war with its surviving nuclear infrastructure largely intact and greater incentives to build the bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pauly agreed it is unrealistic to expect the United States and Israel can destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear program through air power alone. The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency believes Iran has roughly 440 kilograms \u2014 about 970 pounds \u2014 of 60% highly enriched uranium, possibly spread across multiple facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecuring this material will require either U.S. ground troops or, after some coercive bargain is reached, international inspectors,\u201d Pauly said. <\/p>\n

In an exchange with reporters last week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had few details to offer on what U.S. options were to remove or eliminate an accessible uranium stockpile<\/a>, enriched to near weapons grade, that had been buried in a U.S. operation last year intended on obliterating the nuclear threat.<\/p>\n

Diplomacy, he suggested, might be required to secure the material. <\/p>\n

\u201cI will say we have a range of options, up to and including Iran deciding that they will give those up,\u201d he told reporters, \u201cwhich of course we would welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0After two weeks of war with Iran, the Trump administration is being forced to temper its expectations of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[177,10150,10149,394,34,196,37,7090,1403,1372,10148,10147,69,392,4445,1537],"class_list":{"0":"post-20146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-endgame","10":"tag-exceptional-ability","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-iran-war","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-nuclear-program","16":"tag-pentagon","17":"tag-president","18":"tag-reid-pauly","19":"tag-swift-end","20":"tag-tehran","21":"tag-trump","22":"tag-u-s-intelligence","23":"tag-white-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116232711226974705","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}