President Donald Trump suggested on Saturday night that the U.S. and Iran can “make peace,” hours after he approved American strikes on sensitive Iranian targets – joining Israel’s week-old offensive and torpedoing steps in recent days toward diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump’s analysis of the situation defied the thinking among most experts, who say it is near-certain Iran will now retaliate and have far less faith in any possible agreement with the U.S. – and included threats of further bombing.
“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier,” Trump said, flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “This cannot continue – there will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than what we have witnessed.”
Trump spoke for less than four minutes and offered virtually no explanation or strategic rationale for what is indisputably the most consequential foreign policy decision of his 5-month-old second presidential term. Beyond suggesting a possibility for de-escalation without explaining how that might happen, his remarks in parts veered into seeming confusion – “we love you, God,” Trump said at one point – and contradicted his own logic, in a way that hinted at the danger of further U.S. military entanglement.
“The strikes were a spectacular military success,” the president claimed.
Analysts say it will be extremely difficult to assess how much damage strikes by Israel or the U.S. have dealt to Iran’s nuclear capabilities without either dispatching ground troops into the country or using talks with Iranian leaders to permit international inspections of the country’s facilities, which will be harder after an American assault and could become even less likely if Tehran’s retaliation spurs further and more expansive attacks by Washington.
Discussing possible de-escalation with HuffPost earlier this week, Abdullah Baabood, a visiting professor of international studies at Waseda University in Japan, said: “A limited U.S. strike would almost certainly provoke retaliation — not just symbolic, but escalatory.”
The Saturday development will likely deepen the suspicion among Iranian leaders that Trump was never serious about attempted diplomacy for a new nuclear deal – replacing the Obama-era agreement he abandoned – and that he is fully committed to the vision of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long spoken of regime change in Iran and sought to pull the U.S. into a war with the country. Trump spoke warmly of Netanyahu in his remarks, saying the U.S. and Israel “worked as a team,” and adding: “God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel.”
Iran has likely already felt it needs to “establish deterrence” against Israel, after “watching the wider net of the Middle East: how Israel acts in Lebanon and Syria,” Narges Bajoghli, a Johns Hopkins University professor, told HuffPost on Friday, referring to the Israeli military’s attacks in the two countries in recent months and continued occupation of parts of their territory.
Trump’s maneuvers come amid deep disputes in the U.S. over the best path forward regarding Iran, particularly among his own political coalition.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the country’s chief pro-Israel lobby, praised Trump’s decision to attack Iran as “historic and decisive” in a Saturday night statement, echoing Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was “on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon” despite U.S. intelligence and most other governments rejecting that assertion. And some voices in the Trump administration, like the hawkish, deeply pro-Israel top U.S. military commander in the Middle East Erik Kurilla, have for months encouraged the idea of joint U.S.-Iran attacks.
Meanwhile, high-profile Trump allies like the right-wing pundit Steve Bannon have been urging him to be careful in involving the U.S. in Israel’s offensive, arguing that Trump risks ensnaring the U.S. in an unpredictable, costly regional war.
“The thing I find grotesque about the hawks is they’re not thinking about any of the second and third order consequences … they’re just in a state of ecstasy,” Reid Smith, the vice president of foreign policy at Stand Together, an organization founded by the right-wing billionaire Charles Koch, told HuffPost on Saturday after the U.S. strike, pointing to the risk of an Iranian retaliation soon against U.S. troops.
“I would not be happy if I was on an American ship or at At-Tanf,” an American military base in Syria, Smith continued. U.S. bases in the Middle East, particularly in and near Iraq – home to powerful pro-Iran militias – are seen as likely Iranian targets.
Smith expressed some hope Trump will deem his strike “sufficient and successful” without further American involvement in the war, but noted the risk of what national security observers refer to as “mission creep.”
“Everybody knew this was the easy part. They wanted him to do the easy part because they knew once you’ve got a toe in the water, you’ve got a foot in the water and then you’re all the way in,” Smith said.