Analysis
US
bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is Trump’s biggest gamble yet as president
Patrick
Wintour
Diplomatic
editor
Much could
go wrong for the US and the Middle East as Trump and Netanyahu pursue the
disempowerment of Iran
Sun 22 Jun
2025 20.39 BST
Donald
Trump, a self-confessed risk-taker, has taken the greatest gamble – not just
with his political reputation and the future of the Middle East, but arguably
with the whole concept of military intervention as a way to solve intractable
geopolitical problems.
If the US
president succeeds – and there will be many rival interpretations and metrics
of success in the weeks ahead – it is possible he will have disempowered Iran,
and diminished the global influence of a regime that has for 40 years sponsored
threats against the west. In the process his personal authority will have been
enhanced, and his next three years in office will be a triumph that may
exacerbate some of his worst authoritarian and impulsive traits.
He will also
have allied the US more closely than ever with Benjamin Netanyahu, a man deeply
disliked in large parts of the world for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and
its assault on Gaza.
Under such a
scenario, America will not be loved, but it will be feared, and from that fear
will come deference. After the failures of ground interventions and occupations
in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war in 2003, Trump would have
re-established the value of limited military intervention.
Equally,
however, much could go wrong. Many leaders and diplomats in Europe may well
privately be hoping that is the case – not because they have time for the
Iranian government, but because they fear Trump’s methods are perilous, and in
breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and international law.
China, which
has big interests in Iran, will want to make sure this episode does not usher
in a unipolar world. Russia will draw lessons, and is already willing to
acknowledge the danger of a US win, telling Iran it is willing to do more to
help Tehran develop its nuclear capabilities.
Gulf states
are also expressing outrage at Trump’s intervention. Arab diplomats said they
were trying to square Trump’s military intervention with his extraordinary
speech in Riyadh two months ago in which he decried past US military
adventurism. “In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more
nations than they built – and the interventionists were intervening in complex
societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Trump had said.
The Gulf
states fear being dragged into a war. Most had thought an irascible Trump
needed to allow Iran a right to very limited enrichment of uranium, under close
UN monitoring. As an issue it was considered eminently solvable through patient
diplomacy – of the kind the Europeans had just embarked on.
Nor is the
military conflict over. So far Iran has been out-thought and outmanoeuvred in
this war. But it is possible that Trump finds himself sucked into a longer
conflict than he intended. Netanyahu has notoriously so far shown himself
better at starting conflicts than ending them. Once fully engaged in the Iran
conflict, Trump will have to see it through to the end, tying him up in the
kind of endless foreign conflict that he promised on the election campaign
trail he would abjure.
If Iran
refuses to submit, it has options. It could abandon the non-proliferation
treaty, deport the UN inspectors and try to rebuild the nuclear programme in
secret. Should Tehran still possess a so-far hidden supply of highly enriched
uranium, its nuclear scientists may be tempted to try to dash for a crude
nuclear device. That would give Tehran time to try to rally support among its
battered allies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
Sanam Vakil,
the Middle East specialist at the London thinktank Chatham House, said the US
leader perceives of this strike as a one-off. “Trump was careful, he
telegraphed the strikes, he sent messages of warning to Iran in advance,” she
said. “I think he wants this to end with a negotiation, with a deal and one he
can show is a victory in setting back Iran’s nuclear programme.”
But a
careful de-escalation after such a US escalation is fraught with risk. Vakil
said: “The president is impatient and does not have the bandwidth for
protracted negotiation. The Iranians want sanctions relief, but do not know how
any longer they can trust Trump, a man they say has repeatedly deceived them.”
The
best-case scenario is that Iran settles on a symbolic retaliation, much as it
did in 2020, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander. The president might then push
Israel to wind down its war and urge Iran to resume negotiations over a new
nuclear deal.
Either way,
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, appeared to speak for the region with
his assessment. “The events this morning are outrageous and will have
everlasting consequences,” he said.
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