American presidents from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama tried to resolve the conflict with Iran through combinations of diplomacy, sanctions, and covert action. None fully succeeded. President Donald Trump has decided to try something different: overwhelming military force, aimed directly at the government rather than its behavior, with the explicit goal of regime change and unconditional surrender. It is a bet that no previous president was willing to make.
The military means deployed to pursue that bet have been extraordinary. American B-2 stealth bombers have struck Iran’s buried ballistic missile infrastructure with dozens of 2,000-pound penetrating munitions. A large Iranian naval vessel has been hit and possibly destroyed. Israel has issued mass evacuation orders in Lebanon covering over one million people and struck Hezbollah’s command infrastructure across Beirut. The defense secretary has confirmed that a dramatic surge in US firepower is imminent.
The diplomatic path Trump has abandoned had its own notable successes and failures. The 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated under the Obama administration temporarily constrained Iran’s nuclear program, though Trump himself withdrew from it in 2018. Earlier diplomatic contacts had produced moments of limited cooperation, particularly on Afghanistan and during certain crisis periods. None produced the fundamental change in Iranian behavior that American policy has consistently sought. Trump has concluded that diplomacy has failed, and that military force offers the only realistic path to the outcome he seeks.
Iran has responded to the military campaign with a combination of military resistance and institutional resilience. The Revolutionary Guards have continued their missile and drone campaign. The government has continued to function. The leadership council has convened to plan succession. No senior officials have defected. The government has framed the conflict as foreign aggression against the Iranian nation, a framing with significant domestic resonance in a country with a deep historical memory of foreign interference.
The bet Trump is making has been lost before. The bombing campaigns against North Vietnam did not break Hanoi’s will. The bombing of Serbia in 1999 did produce a political result, but against a vastly smaller and less capable adversary. The invasion of Iraq produced regime change but not stability. Each of these cases offers different lessons. What they share is the reminder that military power, however overwhelming, is a blunt instrument for achieving the precise political outcomes that wars are supposed to serve.