'The United States under President Donald Trump has taken the decision to go into talks with Iran regarding the country's contested nuclear programme'. This sentence might as well remind one of 2013, when under the American presidency of Barack Obama, pressure was being exerted against Tehran to come to the negotiating table. Back then, as Iran agreed to do so, it led to the signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 (officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the 'JCPOA'). After that, Trump had been one of the deal's most vocal critics, finally terminating US participation in 2018.
The US, as of writing this, is building a massive military arsenal in the Middle East. Rumour mills are abuzz as to what kind of action Trump may be mulling, considering that a second round of talks hosted by Oman in Geneva, Switzerland, was, as per reports, not entirely a failure. Even so, two American aircraft carriers are being stationed in the Mediterranean and Arabian waters alike, while open-source information on social media is lit up with a column of US Air Force mid-air refuellers heading to Europe, potentially aimed at supporting a military campaign in the Middle East.
The deepening anxieties are not without merit. In 2025, a similar military movement was used as a cover by the US and Israel to launch strikes against Iranian nuclear and air defence sites using stealth B-2 bombers carrying weapons only in the American arsenal, which could target facilities deep underground. Since then, much has happened with the Iran file, including months of protests called upon by Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah of Iran. That unrest saw thousands of protesters take to the streets, leading to an internet ban, a communications blackout, and the state dispersing such gatherings with force.
1. Trump Has Already Shown His Cards
Any impending second strike against Iran by the US will have to lay out a different set of political and military aims compared to June last year. One of these is expected to be a final takedown of Iran's expansive missile stocks. The earlier strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, which are built deep underground, have already utilised primary weapon systems that the US has for such roles. In the months following the attacks, it has been more evident that while they caused much damage across Iranian facilities, the bombings did not provide the death blow to the programme as the US was expecting. The three main sites, namely, Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, suffered significant damage, but the underground depth of the sites largely spared them from long-term damage. Iran's nuclear designs seem to have been built around redundancy and contingency of lopsided air power being used against it. True, Israeli air strikes in the past decommissioned nuclear facilities in Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007), but Iran is a much more complex affair, as the past few months have shown.
2. Are There Alternatives Within Iran?
There is no doubt that US and Israeli firepower over the past year has shaken the Iranian establishment as well as the 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei to the core. Prior to this, Israeli air strikes and intelligence operations deep inside Iranian cities had also removed some of the country's top political, military, and intelligence leadership. However, some resilience of structure and loyalty of personnel has kept the state from any impending collapse, at least till now. A new round of military strikes, which will almost exclusively rely on air power, will come with unclear aims. Trump's impending wish for regime change, whether holistic or engineered, seems to be wishful thinking. Any push to install a new regime through military power cannot be successful without sustained on-ground operations. And this too will only work if there were robust anti-regime forces and personalities within Iran readily available to take charge or offer alternatives.
The recent US actions in Venezuela, a precise and impressive military operation leading to Nicolás Maduro's second-in-command taking over the country - in cahoots with the US - is now commonly cited as a model. However, as always, the Iranian case is starkly different, as are its internal modalities, power centres, rivalries and so on. For example, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which reports directly to the Ayatollah and is deeply entrenched in the state economy, has not flinched so far when it comes to supporting the Islamic Revolution. The leaders who were eliminated were swiftly replaced. A glimpse of this system was seen even in 2020, when the noted Qassim Soleimani, the chief of the IRGC's external operations (Quds Force), was assassinated by the US in a drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq. The IRGC did not teeter and moved into the next line of leadership effortlessly.
3. An Unstable Middle East Is Everyone's Nightmare
Trump, in all likelihood, does not have the appetite for a long-term, sustained war with Iran. As a vocal critic of America's decades-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, any conflict with Iran will be a protracted one and will lead the US to be bogged down with the Middle East once again; it will threaten not just regional states hosting American bases but also those that back the US' economic and political interests. Keeping these scenarios in mind, many Arab partners of Trump have already made firm that they will not allow their airbases to be used by the US military as launch points for any action. It is for this reason that the US has moved its own aircraft carriers to the region, nullifying the need for on-land bases.
Finally, if Trump's military aims have to expand beyond just the nuclear programme, targeting missile infrastructure or, more precariously, orchestrate regime change, then mere sustained air campaigns will not suffice. The situation on the ground in Iran needs to be conducive so that any political gaps created by external military power can be filled immediately. Whether Trump has considered these contingencies in his plan or not is anybody's guess. Sure, the US is very capable of another military-driven 'hit-and-run', this time in Iran. But the question would remain, to what end?
(Kabir Taneja is Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation Middle East)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
