NI: Trump’s Iran Dilemma – Strike or Lose Face?

Photo: ‘The National Interest’

The decision to bomb Iran could lead to disastrous consequences for the United States. The decision not to could be far worse, ‘The National Interest’ stresses.

“We have a lot of ships going that [Iran] direction, just in case… We have an armada heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it.”

President Donald Trump delivered that warning on the evening of January 22, six days after publicly thanking Iran for reportedly halting its scheduled mass executions of political prisoners. A few years ago, such juxtaposition would have been written off as Trumpian unpredictability. Now it reads more like method: strategic ambiguity applied to adversaries, especially the Islamic Republic.

Trump’s seeming ambiguity has collided with an Iranian crisis of extraordinary magnitude. What began as a series of demonstrations over economic woes quickly turned political, with chants aimed at the overthrow of the regime itself. The crackdown has been bloody. Iran’s government has put the death toll from the recent protests at 3,117.

Against that backdrop, Trump’s rhetoric has been unusually direct. At the beginning of the year, before the crackdown, the 47th president warned that the United States was “locked and loaded,” said Iran was “looking at FREEDOM,” and urged protesters to keep going — declaring that “help is on its way.” Yet the United States did not strike during the most intense phase of the repression.

That gap, between encouragement and withheld force, may have shaped Tehran’s own calculations. The Islamic Republic appears to have gambled that a rapid, overwhelming crackdown would end the challenge fast enough to deny Washington a pretext for action. But US deployments in the Middle East now suggest the crisis is not “over” in Washington’s mind, even as Trump signals openness to talks. The result is a dilemma: whether Trump decides to strike or not to strike, his decision will carry consequences that will shape not only the Islamic Republic, but also how Iranians, and the opposition abroad, understand the United States.

If America Starts a War, It May Not Be Able to Contain It

A full-bore US attack on Iran would confront Washington with a basic problem: it would initiate an armed conflict that Washington would be hard-pressed to contain. The June 2025 precedent is often described as “managed escalation” — US airstrikes inside Iran, followed by a calibrated Iranian response in order to save face and project strength to a domestic audience, followed by a ceasefire. But a new attack, coming after mass unrest and mass repression, would likely be interpreted in Tehran less as a limited punitive action and more as a threat to the regime’s survival. In that context, Iran may decide it cannot afford restraint — and respond with far greater strength.

Iran has long warned that a direct US attack on its core institutions would “set the region on fire,” and has threatened to respond in kind. Iran’s logic is straightforward: by expanding the battlefield, stretching US defenses, and raising the costs of action, Tehran can generate domestic political pressure in the United States as Washington’s war bills mount. Even in a degraded state, Tehran retains many options to inflict pain on US forces in the region; missiles, drones, proxy attacks, cyber operations, shipping harassment, and threats to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz. A regime that believes it is fighting for survival may quickly reach for maximalist tools — not because they guarantee victory, but because they inflict as much pain as possible on an adversary before defeat.

Nor is it assured that the United States could destroy the Iranian regime through military action. The strike may not cause regime change on its own, but it could create conditions in which it becomes more thinkable.

Inaction Would Make Trump Look Weak — and America Deceitful

If the United States refrains from attacking, the consequences are different, but not necessarily smaller. The immediate cost is reputational: American credibility, as well as Trump’s personal credibility, would be damaged with a significant segment of Iran’s anti-regime public.

For the Islamic Republic, US restraint would be a gift — validating the regime’s core propaganda claim that Washington is manipulative and unreliable. It would also allow Tehran to reframe the crackdown as strategic wisdom: even those who aligned themselves with America were left to absorb the costs…

The opposition abroad would also pay a price. Many exiled figures have invested heavily in American backing, and some have explicitly promised that help is coming. If America does not strike, the opposition risks being accused of poor judgment for betting on intervention, and of overstating its capacity. That credibility loss would further fragment an already divided opposition landscape, and strengthen the regime — not because the Islamic Republic becomes more legitimate, but because its various challengers appear less viable.

But the lesson is the same across the spectrum: the decisive variable is less the opening move than what comes next. The Middle East, and the United States’ position in it, can no longer absorb another major military episode driven by impulse, ambiguity, or improvisation.

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