How Trump's Iran operation could backfire and why it may become his biggest mistake

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States had launched a military campaign against Iran.

First and foremost, this is a war of choice. The US had other policy options available.

Read more about why the war in Iran could become a failure for the American president in the article by Richard Haass of New York University: A war without guarantees of success: why the US attack did not change the regime in Iran, despite Trump’s demands.

US President Donald Trump has chosen an objective – regime change – that is political rather than military.

In the case of Iran, though, Trump has called for regime change – but without preparing the ground for it. The political opposition is not united or functioning as a government in waiting, which means that it is unable to accept defections, much less provide security.

But while military force can destroy and kill, on its own, it cannot bring about regime change, which requires the regime to collapse.

History suggests that regime change requires a physical, on-the-ground presence. This is the lesson of Germany and Japan after World War II, and Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan more recently. And even with a ground presence, such efforts often come up short. In Iran, occupation is inconceivable, given the country’s size and ability to resist.

A tactic often called decapitation is unlikely to succeed in Iran, where the leadership has institutionalized itself since taking power nearly a half-century ago. Moreover, the leadership has had time to improve succession planning over the past few weeks as the possibility of war increased.

All of which is to say that the Trump administration has chosen to accomplish the most ambitious of foreign-policy goals with limited means.

In Iran, Trump may have become captive to his own actions.

In the Iranian case, it appears that assembling a massive military presence – what Trump called an armada – ended up putting pressure on the administration to act, because US forces could not be maintained in a high state of readiness on location indefinitely.

The American people are unprepared for this war. Nor is Trump’s political base, as it will unsettle markets, cause a spike in energy prices, and could go on for some time.

America’s allies are unhappy as well, as Iran has already attacked several neighboring countries and could take steps that damage their economies.

It is possible that last year’s cost-free bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites and the more recent intervention in Venezuela made Trump and those around him highly confident that they could achieve ambitious ends with limited means at a low cost. He may also have been tempted to achieve something historic in Iran – regime change – that eluded his predecessors. He may still succeed. But as a rule, regime change is easier called for than successfully carried out.

While it takes only one side to begin a war, it takes two to end it. Iran now has a vote in how big this conflict becomes and how long it continues.