How should the U.S. respond to Israel's attack on Iran?
Israel's decision to launch a wide-scale military operation against Iran may have come as a shock to many, but it's something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been itching to do for more than decade. The question now is whether President Trump will end up sustaining an Israeli bombing campaign that could last for days, if not weeks.
The fact that Israel conducted the operation several days before Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was scheduled to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for a sixth round of nuclear talks in Oman wasn't lost on most observers.
Netanyahu hasn't been particularly supportive of the Trump administration's diplomatic outreach to the Iranians and reportedly pressed the White House to green-light joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Tehran's nuclear facilities last month. Trump demurred, choosing diplomacy instead, but Netanyahu seems never to have believed the talks would result in anything substantial.
Israel's negotiating position has long been entirely maximalist: Every nuclear complex on Iranian soil must be destroyed, and under no circumstances could Iran be left with even a rudimentary uranium enrichment capability. Trump's position isn't as definitive as Netanyahu's. At times, U.S. officials have talked about striking a deal that would allow the Iranians to continue enriching at a low level with strict, comprehensive international oversight. At other times, Trump has declared that Washington wouldn't sign any deal that allowed Iran to enrich at all.
Various proposals have been floated in the months since those negotiations began, including a regional nuclear consortium involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other powers, which could prevent an indigenous Iranian enrichment program but still supply the region with peaceful nuclear energy, and also stem the possibility of an arms race in the Middle East. The Iranians, however, didn't buy into the idea that no enrichment would be permitted on Iranian soil.
Israel's military attack upends the diplomatic chessboard, such as it is, turning the last few months of U.S.-Iran discussions into empty theater. Trump claims he knew what Israel was up to all along and congratulated Netanyahu on the attack. That alone makes it difficult to imagine Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei authorizing his subordinates to continue discussions with the Americans. Doing so would be a very public act of weakness on Tehran's part.
Even so, the White House still expects Iranian officials to show up for the next round of talks. As Trump argued after the initial Israeli salvo, Iran is in no position to refuse anymore. 'I couldn't get them to a deal in 60 days,' Trump said, referring to the Iranians. 'They were close, they should have done it. Maybe now it will happen.'
In reality, what we are likely to see instead is a collapse of the current diplomatic process and a situation that will be far messier to handle.
Israeli political and military officials have made it abundantly clear that military operations will persist well into next week and perhaps go on even longer than that. The Iranians, in turn, will feel pressure to continue to retaliate with each passing day, whether it's in the form of drones and missiles aimed at Israel's air defenses, terrorist attacks on Western targets or sabotaging cargo vessels in the Persian Gulf. In any case, the Middle East is as close to a full-scale war as it has ever been.
This is a critical moment for the Trump administration, and how it chooses to act in the hours and days ahead will be the determining factor in whether the United States gets dragged into another regional conflagration or not.
Israel will do what it believes it needs to do to maintain its security. Even assuming Trump would try to pressure Netanyahu into stopping the bombings — the evidence for that scenario is slim — it's hardly guaranteed the Israeli premier would listen. For better or worse, Israel's strategic calculus has changed after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Netanyahu is now far less risk-adverse than during his previous stints in office.
The United States can only control what it can control. As much as Trump might like to see the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism hammered, he also doesn't want to aid a conflict that could expose tens of thousands of U.S. troops based in the Middle East to imminent risk. Besides, any U.S. involvement in offensive Israeli military operations would be a betrayal of Trump's core supporters and his campaign promises to avoid the fruitless, unending wars. In addition, U.S. offensive involvement would kill any grand diplomatic ambitions Trump may have in the Middle East and nip in the bud the administration's pivot to the Indo-Pacific as China tries to consolidate its power in Asia.
Sometimes, the best response to a dangerous situation is to do nothing. It won't satisfy the more hawkish elements in Washington, but let's hope Trump holds his fire.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
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