As I write this, the U.S. men’s hockey team is fresh off winning Olympic gold, and the United States and Iran are in a tense standoff as the American president debates whether to order military action. Welcome back, 1980! But while the tension between the U.S. and Iran is just as palpable today as it was 46 years ago—brought into focus by the buildup of forces into the CENTCOM region—the reason for the current heightened tensions with Iran are less clear to the American public. In 1980, Iran had captured and was holding hostages after having seized the American Embassy in Tehran, a clear catalyst for crisis. But while there are myriad reasons that Iran is an American enemy today, the specific cause for the buildup, and how those forces might be employed, is uncertain owing to imprecise and conflicting messaging—something the White House seems to be attempting to clean up.
The confusion is largely the White House’s own fault—due to overstating previous successes, publicly misrepresenting risks, and offering conflicting justifications for confrontation with Iran. After last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer, the strike to degrade the physical infrastructure behind Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the administration followed that incredibly well-planned offensive with an equally aggressive communications offensive: The administration forcibly insisted that the operation had completely obliterated the Iranian program, fired officials whose assessments suggested a less disruptive timeline, and suggested anyone questioning the enduring effects of the mission were somehow besmirching the accomplishments of the air crews who flew it. The average American voter would be forgiven for being confused when they hear very little from their government on the Iranian nuclear program in the eight months between these declarations and special envoy Steve Witkoff saying the Iranians are one week from the required material for a nuclear weapon.
In January, widespread pro-democracy protests spread through Iran, initially inspiring resolute messages of support from President Donald Trump. Prior to the Iranian crackdown against these protests, Trump told the regime that there would be consequences if they took action against the protesters. After the initial regime response, he added that help was on the way and that the Iranian people should continue to rise up and seize control of government facilities. Despite the bluster, no help came for these protesters and, even by the president’s own estimation, roughly 30,000 of them were killed with impunity by their own government.
While no action occurred in response to Iranian defiance of the president’s demands, movement of additional military assets into the CENTCOM theater took place in the immediate aftermath, suggesting that Trump was building his options for a retroactive strike: too late to help the protesters or build momentum for their movement to grow into a popular uprising, but a punitive measure directed at the regime for defying the president and in hopes of saving some American face after our failure to act in time.
If diplomacy cannot result in a firm, verifiable, and acceptable agreement, Trump should prepare both Congress and the American people for what is to come, clearly laying out the costs and why those costs are worth it given the risks of doing nothing.
The administration is now attempting, better late than never, to clear up the confusion behind the buildup. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed the Gang of 8—comprising the leaders of each party in the House and Senate, and the chair and ranking member of each chamber’s intelligence committee—on the threat from Iran, prompting even prominent Democrats among them to say they heard reason for concern, but that the case for military action needs to be clearer. During the State of the Union address that evening, President Trump seemed like he was trying to make a rhetorical pivot, claiming the death toll in Iran had not been greater due to his threats of action and focusing on the nuclear threat, thus suggesting the issue of protection of the protesters was in the past and the threat of Iranian desire for nuclear weapons was the matter at hand. On Wednesday, both Vice President J.D. Vance and Rubio suggested a very clear and present threat from the Iranian nuclear program (while Rubio blurred the lines a bit by pointing to Iranian conventional missiles in the Middle East as an enduring issue). All this leading to restarted negotiations with Iran in Geneva, led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
While this is a good start, greater clarity is required if we are going to start a conflict with Iran. The truth of Iranian progress regarding its nuclear program is likely somewhere in the middle between the pronouncement of complete destruction from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last summer and the doomsday proclamations from Witkoff that we could be living under threat of an Iranian A-bomb before the Ides of March. While we destroyed a great deal of physical infrastructure during Midnight Hammer, we likely did very little to dent either knowledge of or desire for weaponization. Additionally, the status of the existing enriched material that Iran had on hand remains a mystery. Any combination of these factors—signals of continued research, intent, or use of material on hand—might be what has sparked the current tension.
While the seemingly newfound messaging is a good first step in making the case a military operation, it isn’t enough. The American people might remain skeptical of sudden claims of a weapons of mass destruction program, especially in light of the fact that many—including the president’s own director of national intelligence—tried to squash legitimate concern over Iran’s desire for a nuclear weapon and had spent decades stoking the theory that America’s intelligence community created false claims of WMD programs as a pretext for war (a reminder, the international intelligence consensus getting it wrong on their assessment of Iraqi WMD is not the same thing as making things up). Here, the president has a choice to make—a balance between two concerns. Whatever has raised his apprehension over Iran is likely highly classified—the president must decide how much of the reports he discloses publicly and how much he should protect, given the sensitive nature of the information. It’s neither an easy nor objectively clear choice, but it is one of many examples of the need for presidential decision-making. In the past, President Trump has demonstrated the willingness to discuss or disclose sensitive information for far more trivial reasons.
But regardless of the specific mechanism by which the White House plans to communicate the justification for any action against the Iranian regime, this communication is absolutely essential—and late. This lack of consensus-building may reflect learning the wrong lessons from previous successes. President Trump has ordered a series of bold, well-executed, short-duration operations: striking Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons and the targeted killing of Qassem Suleimani in his first term, the aforementioned Midnight Hammer, and the operation to seize Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. All of these operations were completely successful from an operational perspective, completed before they were ever publicly disclosed, and resulted in zero American deaths. In fact, of all the new military actions that President Trump has ordered, only one American service member—Senior Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens, a Navy SEAL killed on a raid conducted nine days into Trump’s first term—has died in action.
But if diplomacy fails and conflict comes, operations against Iran are likely to be very different from the examples above. Unlike Midnight Hammer, wherein the United States destroyed physical capabilities, this new campaign would likely be targeting Iranian will. In other words, increasing the pain on the regime until such a time that the mullahs agree, in some verifiable way, to abandon their nuclear weapons program. That might look like an initial, overwhelming strike over a single period of darkness, but then the next step is waiting for Iran to wave the white flag. If its leaders do not, that calls for a sustained campaign until such a time as they do. Unlike all the operations previously mentioned, where the United States focused its most capable global strike assets, standoff weapons, and special operations forces for a single night of concentrated force, this would require a much larger effort, and a broader swath of American military power—aircraft with fewer technical capabilities than those of the B-2 or the F-35, fewer assets available to respond to Iranian missile counterattacks, and a greater number of targets in the air—it’s worth remembering even backwater Serbs shot down the most sophisticated stealth aircraft at the time during the Kosovo campaign.
And this is likely what has sparked reporting about Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his perceived opposition to military action, which is misleading. Caine is likely not weighing support or opposition, but is rather, as the president’s senior military adviser, offering a sober assessment of the risks. Given what might be required, and the potential duration, there is a risk of depleting critical stocks of both precision-guided munitions and ballistic missile defense assets. Further, he is most likely communicating the risk that we will lose American pilots–either killed or captured by the Iranians, a complication that would make the already difficult problem infinitely more wicked. Trump has enjoyed the success of military operations with zero cost in American lives, potentially giving him a false sense of the risks when he orders new ones. And the one example we have shows he may not handle the responsibility in presidential fashion, as he placed blame on subordinates for Ryan Owens’ death in an operation he ordered. As with many of his decisions that have consequences, Trump seemed to feel the buck stopped elsewhere.
Which is why Trump and his administration should quickly and clearly prepare the American people for what might come. He should lay out the threat, specifically, and determine the endstate that is required—either through negotiated settlement or military action. He should hold Witkoff—who often takes at face value the dubious claims of nefarious regimes with whom he is supposed to play hardball—to a clear standard, not ceding to an easy or face-saving settlement with a regime that has negotiated in bad faith for decades. And, if diplomacy cannot result in a firm, verifiable, and acceptable agreement, he should prepare both Congress and the American people for what is to come, clearly laying out the costs and why those costs are worth it given the risks of doing nothing. This would require avoiding his natural predisposition to color everything in rosy tones (e.g., when he said the military believes a conflict with Iran will be “easily won”).
In 2001 and 2003, the United States entered into two conflicts with the underlying cause for one and the desired endstate for the other being exceptionally clear. Yet, over the course of the intervening years, mission creep, shifting metrics, and overly positive reporting on progress tainted our understanding of and support for both. We are now potentially going to enter into a conflict without any such understanding at initiation—a clear recipe for disaster and popular disapproval when challenges occur. To avoid this, the president needs to make the justification and desired endstate clear, and seek approval from Congress—a legal, political, and moral imperative.
Military conflict is a grave matter—the weightiest of decisions we ask of a president. And while it comes with horrible costs, there are times when it is the better of two difficult options. Conflict with Iran is an ugly option. But it is far better than risking a conflict with a nuclear-armed Iran.
