Donald Trump is under pressure to spell out his vision for Iran amid the ongoing attacks on the country and reports of the first American casualties since the launch of unprovoked US and Israeli military strikes.
Trump’s critics are demanding that the White House provide greater clarity about what comes next. Opponents and analysts say the lack of a clear plan outlined so far has created a danger of the US being sucked into a long-lasting conflict of the sort that Trump repeatedly vowed to avoid.
“If the administration has a game plan, they have yet to reveal it, frankly,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow and Iran specialist at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
“He’s going to have to move in the direction of a bigger political project, which isn’t just the military part, but a deeper conversation in his administration about what sort of regime change they could bring about.
“Then it’s not going to be a campaign of four days or four weeks or even four months. It could be something much longer.”
Trump – who has repeatedly denounced the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a mistake – has been criticised for failing to publicly make the case for launching renewed attacks on Iranian installations after claiming to have “obliterated” its nuclear facilities in a series of strikes last June.
His brief remarks on Iran in last week’s state of the union speech referred to the threats from its nuclear programme and ballistic missiles but made no mention of regime change. He also said he would prefer to resolve the issues of Iran’s supposed military threat through diplomacy.
Democrats have voiced fears that the decision to attack Iran could be open-ended without a clearly stated goal.
“Where does this all go?” Jim Himes, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee told NPR. “We can bomb Iran along with the Israelis for, you know, lengthy period of time, but in the service of what?
“Is the intention regime change? Because there aren’t many examples either of regime change affected through bombing, or, quite frankly, of American military forces actually doing regime change in a way that is satisfactory.”
Vananka warned that there was little prospect of regime change without the regime collapsing “under its own weight” in the face of popular opposition or the US putting “boots on the ground”, an option he suggested should be best carried out using intelligence assets rather than troops.
“A smart way [of implementing the latter option] would be intelligence led by the same people that the CIA has on the ground [that] revealed to them who were the senior leaders that are hiding, where they’re hiding, when they’re hiding.
“Use the same assets to start creating new set of political dynamics in the regime and essentially make people accept that this regime is gone, it’s not going to come back in the same way and essentially have kind of a political transformation along those lines. It requires a lot of investment, and it’s not even a sure thing that the US can pull that off.”
Steven Cash, a former CIA operations officer and now head of the Steady State – an organization of retired US national security officers – called the absence of a “what’s next” plan “very troubling” and suggested that Trump may be more interested in creating conditions to interfere in the forthcoming US midterm elections than regime change in Iran.
“One of the things that we have certainly learned from everything from the Korean war through the cold war, through Vietnam and certainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, is it’s not enough to start a war, you need to have a plan to end a war,” he said.
With the theocracy’s most powerful political figure and top cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, confirmed as having been killed – along with scores of other top regime figures – Trump has said those that remained were keen to talk.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he told the Atlantic. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”
But in the middle of the attacks on Iran – and Tehran’s retaliation across the Middle East – that might not be easy.
Most of those involved in earlier negotiations had been killed, Trump said. “Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big hit. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner.”
The comments appeared to support Vatanka’s view that the president “doesn’t have a plan for regime change” but is instead seeking a “weakened regime that doesn’t hurt anyone”.
“If he wanted regime change, there are plenty of opposition figures he can bring to the White House and say, ‘This guy is going to be the next ruling leader in Iran’,” Vatanka said. “He doesn’t do that, which leaves us thinking, maybe he’s still thinking to [make a deal with] same regime.”
But that notion could be blown off course by Iranian retaliation, which might force Trump to adopt a harder line to avoid looking weak.
Three US troops were reported killed and five were injured as Iran retaliated with a wave of strikes of its own on Sunday.
Trump gave explicit support for “regime change” in his video taped message announcing the strikes on Saturday, but provided little indication of how it should happen beyond urging the Iranian population to act.
“For many years, you have asked for America’s help,” he said. “Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
Numerous videos posted on social media on Saturday purported to depict crowds of people celebrating Khamenei’s death in towns and cities across Iran. At least one showed relatives of a protester killed in recent anti-regime demonstrations apparently dancing with delight next to the deceased’s grave. The Guardian has not verified the footage.
