As American and Israeli planes descended to launch the opening salvos of the war in Iran, Donald Trump’s plan for regime change in Tehran was about to collide with the reality of the largest American intervention in the Middle East since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
That reality came quickly.
One hundred and seventy-five people were killed when an American Tomahawk missile crashed into a girls’ school, apparently because the Pentagon used outdated targeting data for the attack. Hundreds of air defense missiles were used when Iran’s initial missile counterattack was largely repulsed, but a drone crashed into a makeshift command center in Kuwait, killing six American soldiers and injuring dozens more.
Tens of thousands of American citizens were stranded in the region as the State Department quickly formed a task force to evacuate them. The American strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also killed many of America’s preferred successors; and in his first speech, Trump simply told the Iranians “when we’re done, take over your government,” without any suggestion as to how this might be done.
And the first six days of the war alone cost the U.S. $11.3 billion, the Pentagon told members of Congress, although it was unclear whether those figures included the cost of the buildup or also U.S. missile defenses. The ultimate toll of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz on the global economy remains to be seen.
Previous administrations had been simulating an invasion of Iran for decades, but with Trump in the White House, observers said the rigidly closed circle of advisers around him, the collapse of an interagency process in the government and his erratic decision-making process made this unlike any other U.S. military campaign in recent memory.
“This is difficult under any circumstances, but especially with so little (evidence of) planning,” said Philip Gordon, former national security adviser to Kamala Harris and White House Middle East coordinator under Barack Obama.
Of the growing chaos in the Middle East, he said: “It’s surprising that Trump is surprised.”
The previous administration had “imagined” possible conflict scenarios with Iran “many times and constantly,” said Gordon, now of the Brookings Institution, but regularly ran into exactly the problems the Trump administration now faces: Iran targeted neighboring countries to threaten regional war and closed the Strait of Hormuz, threatening global oil trade and driving up energy prices.
“One of the reasons we signed the nuclear deal and didn’t try to change the regime is exactly what is happening,” he said of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump withdrew from the treaty in 2018.
The military campaign to eliminate the Iranian leadership has achieved considerable success. The first strikes that killed Khamenei and dozens of his top advisers were the product of a collaboration between Israeli intelligence on the ground and American signals intelligence. Trump seemed poised to match the success of the 12-day war, when the United States launched surgical strikes against Iran’s nuclear program and then exited the conflict.
But Iran has continued to fight. And while Trump and senior officials such as US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announce the complete destruction of the Iranian leadership in successive briefings, there are no clear explanations of what the United States will call victory in the conflict and how it will now reverse Iran’s decision to restrict global oil supplies.
“The military planning has been stellar,” said Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an expert on U.S. foreign policy toward Iran. “That said, politically, this is looking more and more like group bullshit. And the reason is that the first step of any plan is to establish a goal: the goals must pursue that goal. The United States has this backwards. We have the goals, but we don’t have a clear goal, and that’s not up to the Pentagon planners, it’s up to Donald Trump.”
The goal of the U.S. mission has changed repeatedly since January’s naval buildup: from supporting the killing of Iranian protesters in a government offensive to eliminating Iran’s nuclear program and disabling its ballistic missile system. Now he has focused on a new goal: opening the Strait of Hormuz, the closure of which has driven oil prices above $100 a barrel and even led the Trump administration to suspend sanctions on Russian oil, reversing its policy in a different war.
“Each of these objectives would have required a different military strategy,” said Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute and former senior director for Middle East affairs at the national security council during the George W. Bush administration. Now that Iran closes the strait, he added, “the other side has the right to vote” on when to end the war, which could allow Iran to drag the United States into a protracted conflict.
The decision-making in a small circle was partly intentional.
Trump entered government last year with a sweeping attack on the “deep state” that others have called the “taint” of D.C. foreign policy, removing career government employees who had staffed agencies and departments and who he said conspired to undermine his previous administration and prevent changes in U.S. foreign policy. Within months of taking office, Trump gutted the national security council, and later Secretary of State Marco Rubio carried out major layoffs at the State Department.
There was little sign that key parts of the State Department beyond Rubio’s immediate circle were included in political planning: There were no operations to evacuate citizens and at-risk embassies remained staffed even during the early days of the war. But even as the United States’ intention to go to war had been telegraphed, the narrow decision to launch the attacks meant that no official instructions had been conveyed to the State Department and other key agencies.
“This is the war we launched,” said Mara Karlin, former deputy secretary of defense. “Obviously, I understand the need for operational security, but you also have to put certain pieces in place so you can be prepared to respond when things happen.”
The Trump administration has also not expressed a clear plan for the people of Iran. Trump himself has indicated that he wanted someone inside Iran to take power – similar to the case in Venezuela – but later said that many potential figures within the regime were killed in the initial attacks. He has now admitted that a regime change probably won’t happen any time soon.
“They literally have people in the streets with machine guns, machine-gunning people if they want to protest,” Trump said of Iran’s security forces. “That’s a pretty big hurdle to overcome for people who don’t have guns.”
For Pentagon planners, the expanding war has meant drawing resources from other military theaters, including parts of air defense systems deployed in Asia to meet the long-term threat from North Korea and China. Following its success in Venezuela, the Trump administration has now embraced the use of military power abroad to achieve its goals, potentially overextending itself in a conflict that could involve much of the region.
“The long-term effects of this will simply be to flush American military power down the drain,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that generally advocates for greater restraint in American foreign policy.
“The long-term effects will be significant in terms of the United States’ ability to project power…I think the implications of this will last for decades.”
