By Matt Spetalnick and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, March 7 (Reuters) - One week into the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran that has plunged the Middle East into turmoil, President Donald Trump faces a growing list of risks and challenges that raise questions about whether he will be able to translate military successes into a clear geopolitical win.
Even after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and devastating blows against Iranian forces on land, at sea and in the air, the crisis has quickly
widened into a regional conflict that threatens a more prolonged U.S. military engagement with fallout beyond Trump’s control.
That is a scenario that Trump had avoided in his two terms in the White House, preferring swift, limited operations like the January 3 lightning raid in Venezuela and June’s one-off strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
“Iran is a messy and potentially protracted military campaign,” said Laura Blumenfeld of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington. “Trump is risking the global economy, regional stability and his own Republican Party's performance in the U.S. midterm elections.”
Trump, who came to office promising to keep the U.S. out of "stupid” military interventions, is now pursuing what many experts see as an open-ended war of choice unprompted by any imminent threat to the U.S. from Iran, despite claims to the contrary by the president and his aides.
In doing so, analysts say he has struggled to articulate a detailed set of objectives or a clear endgame for Operation Epic Fury, the biggest U.S. military operation since the 2003 Iraq invasion, offering shifting rationales for the war and definitions of what would constitute victory.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly rejected that assessment, saying Trump has clearly outlined his goals to "destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and production capacity, demolish their navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and prevent them from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
However, if the war drags on, American casualties mount and the economic costs of interrupted Gulf oil flows multiply, Trump’s biggest foreign policy gamble could also hurt his Republican Party politically.
MAGA SUPPORT HOLDING, FOR NOW
Despite criticism from some Trump supporters opposed to military interventions, members of his Make America Great Again movement have largely backed him on Iran so far.
But any softening of their support could imperil Republicans’ control of Congress in the November midterm elections, given opinion polls showing opposition to the war among the broader electorate, including a crucial bloc of independent voters.
“The American people are not interested in repeating the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Brian Darling, a Republican strategist. “The MAGA base is split between those who relied on no-new-war promises and ones who are loyal to Trump’s judgment.”
High on the list of analysts’ concerns is the mixed messaging from Trump and his aides on whether he is seeking “regime change” in Tehran.
At the outset of the conflict, he suggested that overthrowing Iran’s rulers was a goal, at least by fomenting internal rebellion. Two days later, he stopped short of mentioning that as a priority.
But then on Thursday, Trump told Reuters he would play a role in picking Iran’s next leader and encouraged Iranian Kurdish rebels to launch attacks. That was followed by his demand in a social media post on Friday for Iran’s "unconditional surrender."
Across the region, the dangers have escalated with Iran's retaliatory strikes on Israel and other neighbors as it seeks to sow chaos and raise the costs for Israel, the U.S. and its allies.
Showing that Iran may still be able to activate proxy groups, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia has renewed hostilities with Israel, expanding the war to another country.
American casualties have been low so far, with six service members killed, and Trump has largely shrugged off the prospects for more to come while declining to completely rule out deployment of U.S. ground troops.
Asked whether Americans should worry about Iran-inspired attacks at home, Trump said in a Time magazine interview published on Friday: “I guess … Like I said, some people will die.”
But Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy U.S. national intelligence officer for the Middle East, said: “Nothing is likely to hasten an early end to the war more than American casualties … That’s what Iran is counting on.”
VENEZUELA MISCALCULATION?
Many analysts believe Trump, who has shown an increasing appetite for military action in his second term, miscalculated that the Iran campaign would unfold like the Venezuela operation earlier this year.
U.S. special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, opening the way for Trump to coerce more compliant former loyalists into giving him considerable sway over the country’s vast oil reserves – without any extended U.S. military action needed.
By contrast, Iran has proved a much tougher, better-armed foe with an entrenched clerical and security establishment.
Even the joint U.S.-Israeli "decapitation" strike that killed Khamenei and some other senior leaders has failed so far to prevent Iran from mounting a military response and has raised questions whether they could be replaced by even more hardline figures.
Looming over the conflict, however, is whether Iran could slide into chaos and break apart if its current rulers fall, further destabilizing the Middle East.
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit research institute considered hawkish on Iran, praised Trump’s overall war strategy but said the president needs to make clear publicly that he does not want to see the country disintegrate.
OIL CHOKEPOINT
For now, however, one of the most pressing concerns is Iran’s threat to the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow chokepoint through which a fifth of the world's oil passes. Tanker traffic has halted, which could have grave economic consequences if it lasts.
Though Trump has publicly dismissed any concern about already-rising U.S. gas prices, he and his aides have scrambled for ways to mitigate the war’s impact on energy supplies as voters tell pollsters that the cost of living is their top concern.
“It's an economic pain point on the U.S. economy that it seems was not fully anticipated," said Josh Lipsky at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.
One former U.S. military official close to the U.S. administration said the widening of the war's economic impact had caught Trump’s team by surprise in part because those with knowledge of oil markets were not consulted ahead of the attack on Iran.
The White House's Kelly said, “The Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed" but did not specifically address concerns about preparations for a war.
Trump made his decision to press ahead with the strikes
despite warnings from some senior aides that the escalation could be difficult to contain, according to two White House officials and a Republican close to the administration.
Some traditional U.S. allies were caught off guard. "It's a decision-making circle of one," said one Western diplomat.
The war’s duration is a major unknown likely to determine the extent of its repercussions. With the price tag of the Iran campaign mounting by the day, Trump has said that the operation could last four or five weeks or “whatever it takes” but has offered little explanation of what he envisions will follow.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and formerly commanded the U.S. Army in Europe, commended the U.S. military for its tactics in Iran. But he told Reuters: "From a political, strategic and diplomatic standpoint, it seems not to have been thought all the way through.”
Trump also has a lot riding on helping oil-producing Gulf Arab states weather the Iran crisis given they have long hosted U.S. bases and have made pledges of massive new U.S. investments to him.
While Gulf allies appear to have fallen in line to support the campaign, especially after Tehran targeted them with missile and drone strikes, not everyone in the region is onboard with Trump’s war.
In an open letter to Trump published on Thursday, UAE billionaire Khalaf Al Habtor, a frequent visitor to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, asked: "Who gave you the right to turn our region into a battlefield?"
(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick and Andrea Shalal; additional reporting by Nathan Layne and Samia Nakhoul; Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Don Durfee and Cynthia Osterman)
