Iran wants to turn Donald Trump‘s war into a global and domestic nightmare by inflicting such huge military, political and economic pain that it forces the President to abandon his campaign.
The conflict, now in its second week, is becoming a battle of wills and pain thresholds as missiles and drones rain down across the Middle East and beyond.
The Islamic Republic, facing an existential threat, is focused on endurance and survival – banking on Trump’s fear of a forever war and a rising backlash from his own supporters.
Iran knows it cannot defeat the combined military might of the US and Israel. However, the regime is using every lever at its disposal to expand and extend the conflict in the hope of making the cost too high for its enemies.
Israel has said the war is entering a more intense “next phase”, and the bellicose US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth promised “firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically”.
Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender”.
But that follows days of changing messages from the administration that suggest the US has no coherent war plan. And as speculation builds that ground troops could be sent into Iran, the shadows of Iraq and Afghanistan will loom large in Trump’s mind.
Iran will use Trump’s domestic weakness
Iran understands that Trump fears another forever war.
After railing against foreign wars and campaigning on a pledge to be a “peace president”, his Iran campaign looks like a betrayal to many of his “America First” supporters.
Already, Iran has denied Trump the shock-and-awe victory picture he craves and achieved with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year.
Iran has expanded the conflict to America’s Gulf allies and even further afield: in Turkey, Cyprus and Azerbaijan. At least six US soldiers have been killed, and the White House is struggling to land on a convincing case for the attack.
Some 59 per cent of Americans disapprove of the decision to strike Iran and 60 per cent oppose sending US ground troops – compared with just 12 per cent who approve, according to a CNN poll.
“This is already a domestic problem,” Lewis Galvin, lead Americas analyst at the intelligence consultancy Sibylline, told The i Paper. “It hasn’t really been popular at any point… There’s an already large narrative circulating that the US was pushed into this by Israel, and to an extent Saudi.”
If Iran can make the conflict another deadly quagmire, Trump could be forced to retreat, leaving the regime intact.
“Tehran wants to extend and expand this conflict because it knows that Trump may not have the patience for a long conflict. Nor does the President’s domestic constituency, which opposes open-ended American interventions abroad,” said Bilal Saab, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House.
Iran’s plot to turn Trump’s glory war into his worst nightmare
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