Experts Say Trump Will Target Iran

With the US poised to attack Iran, diplomatic attempts to broker a deal appear to have withered.

Israeli and Arab officials successfully united earlier this month to convince President Donald Trump to refrain from attacking Tehran, fearing a regional bloodbath. But earlier this week, a Gulf official who is familiar with discussions among US officials, told HuffPost the chances of avoiding a strike stood only at 50%. The odds look even worse heading into the weekend.

The US has amassed forces that Trump calls an “armada” in the region and he is considering possibly striking a wider range of targets than the US did in its attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, a US official and another source familiar with administration conversations told HuffPost.

The assault could include political targets, potentially even Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which would likely invite heavy Iranian retaliation and kill future diplomatic prospects.

Trump says the alternative to the strikes are negotiations, but he and his aides have laid out preconditions for talks that few believe Iran is willing to meet. They want Tehran to first commit to limiting its uranium enrichment, ballistic missile programme and support for militias across the Middle East.

Trump and his aides, frustrated with attempted diplomacy last year, feel Iran should make extensive concessions, arguing it has no other option given the immense pressure it is under, the US official and the other source said.

Iran badly wants relief from US economic sanctions, but its leadership is also wary of Trump and of negotiating from a position of weakness, after the government faced its biggest popular uprising in years and brutally suppressed it, killing thousands.

The result, said Ali Vaez, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, is that “Iran’s ceiling sits below America’s floor.”

“I think it’s more likely than not that we do something very shortsighted within the weekend,” said Reid Smith, the vice president of foreign policy at Stand Together, an organisation founded by the right-wing billionaire Charles Koch that advocates for a more restrained US position in global affairs.

Sceptics of a strike say it could be costly — noting there are tens of thousands of US troops within striking range of Iran — as well as the start of an unpredictable, prolonged war. While governments close to Trump, including Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, lobby against a possible strike, Trump is being encouraged to strike by influential hawks at home, such as Senator Lindsey Graham and pro-Israel donors who have long sought regime change in Tehran.

Controversial old-school arguments for intervention are gaining ground in Washington given the military build-up and Trump’s aggressive rhetoric: a Republican congressional aide argued to HuffPost that “there’s a value in the legitimacy of doing a military strike because we said we would, we set conditions for what would happen if there’s not a change in their behaviour.”

They are pitted against officials inside the administration who are not enthusiastic about the idea of strikes, the official said, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who this week told Congress it is unclear what leadership would emerge in Iran if the government falls. Another source included Vice President JD Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles among the sceptics.

Dalia Dassa Kaye, an expert on US-Iran relations at UCLA, expressed concerns about the process by which Trump’s policy is being crafted.

“I don’t think that’s a great thing, whether you like the outcome or no… that the protection of US national security is dependent on whether three Gulf states get [Trump’s] ear on a given day or not,” she told HuffPost.

Though Trump has continued saying his preference is an agreement with Iran, most recently on Thursday night, the administration’s threats and demands have led Iranian officials to say they won’t negotiate under duress.

“It seems we’re interested not so much in negotiations as capitulation,” said Alan Eyre, a former State Department official and fellow at the Middle East Institute think tank. “We’ve stipulated that Iran has to forgo indigenous enrichment [of uranium], get rid of all their uranium, end their support for proxies and incapacitate their missile programme, so our red lines have expanded and become more stringent.”

The Trump administration is counting on Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer close to Trump and his special envoy addressing several other ongoing conflicts, to manage a resumed dialogue with Iran. In the Gulf official’s view, the US is seeking to use maximum pressure to make Tehran agree to several American demands, knowing that might not include all.

Some believe simply restarting US-Iran talks would enable a climb-down and stave off an attack.

But “that is so much harder now” because of America’s preconditions for talks and Iranian reluctance to concede, Vaez said.

Witkoff held talks with Iranians last year that produced little progress and were seen by some as a ruse, since they were quickly followed by joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Since then, after the protests and alarm among Iranian officials about their possible overthrow, Tehran is unlikely to be more confident in such discussions.

“Iran is quite convinced this administration is not seeking a win-win solution,” Eyre said.

Still, he recommended the Trump administration explore back-channel diplomacy while trying to limit mixed messages from the president about his stated goals, which have ranged from Iranian demonstrators taking over their country’s institutions to the longstanding US aim of limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“There may be some type of military attack that prevents significant retaliation by Iran while also encouraging popular protest and decreasing the ability to suppress that protest, but that’s a very fine needle to thread,” Eyre continued.