The United States has major military bases in the region and nearly 40,000 soldiers and officers stationed there. Israel has been engaged since October 2023 in a war on Gaza, a war of attrition in Lebanon, and ongoing military operations in Syria and Yemen. Meanwhile, Iran has proxies in Yemen and Iraq capable of posing threats to both American and Israeli interests.
A three-way confrontation of this nature—despite the confidence displayed by U.S. President Donald Trump in demanding Iran’s “complete surrender” and the echo of military arrogance in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks about “Iran’s skies” being under Israeli control—remains entirely unpredictable. Its details, transformations, potential destruction, duration, geographical spread, political repercussions, and the miscalculations and actions that could produce a catastrophic range of risks and unintended consequences cannot be foreseen.
Regarding the United States, Donald Trump (along with a tight circle of loyalists, such as Jared Kushner, his son-in-law) holds the sole power to decide whether to intervene militarily in the Israeli-Iranian war.
Despite some divisions within the Republican Party—with voices both supporting and opposing intervention and some talking of differing assessments within the military and intelligence communities—President Trump enjoys the loyalty of key figures in his party and administration. Most of them, whether out of trust in him or fear of his wrath, will likely fall in line to support and justify his decision, regardless of its substance.
Additionally, the president does not need Congressional approval to launch air or missile strikes on Iran; the Constitution only requires legislative approval for deploying ground troops abroad. Over the past two decades (since 2001), successive U.S. presidents—Democratic and Republican alike—have become accustomed to making military strike decisions without consulting Congress. Trump, therefore, can ignore the noise of both supporters and opponents in Congress entirely.
Even though American public opinion is deeply polarized over Trump and his domestic and foreign policies—evident in the mass turnout at the “No Kings” protests against his decisions on 14 June 2025—he is unlikely to be swayed. He is focused solely on his direct and organized base within the “MAGA” movement (“Make America Great Again”) and his electoral supporters, who represent roughly half of the American populace. Aside from a few exceptions like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, his loyal followers and voters stand firmly behind him.
Thus, the internal U.S. political environment—encompassing the administration, military and intelligence institutions, Congress, the Republican Party, Trump’s supporters and electoral base, and the opposition—grants him the freedom to decide whether or not to intervene militarily in the Israeli-Iranian war. Based on the current moment, the American president appears closer to intervention, with the stated aim of destroying Iran’s nuclear program and in full coordination with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which also has additional objectives.
This is precisely where the range of risks and unintended consequences emerges—those that the Trump administration may be pulled into due to its Israeli ally’s insistence on not merely dismantling Iran’s nuclear program but also destroying its missile capabilities and destabilizing the Islamic Republic to the point of collapse.
The Israeli far-right’s obsession with regime change in Iran would open the gates of hell to civil unrest and long-term instability in a populous country with vast and strategically vital geography. It would also mean prolonged regional insecurity. Rational actors within the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, military and intelligence agencies, and the National Security Council are aware of these risks. They do not want a repeat of the disastrous regime-change experiences in Iraq and Libya.
Moreover, the destruction of Iran’s missile capabilities—thus stripping the Islamic Republic of its “strong state” image—alongside heavy Israeli strikes on its proxies since 7 October 2023, could push Supreme Leader Khamenei and the ruling elite toward rash, uncalculated responses. These may include striking civilian areas in Israel, attacking U.S. military presence in the region, closing the Strait of Hormuz, and threatening Israeli and American interests globally. The Islamic Republic has a history of involvement in terrorist activities in Europe, Latin America, and other arenas.
Even Iran’s proxies—like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, despite the devastating Israeli strikes, the Houthis in Yemen whose military capacity has been diminished by successive U.S. attacks, and the Iraqi militias restrained by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani’s government—would find it difficult to remain entirely on the sidelines if their patron (Iran) faced existential threats like the destruction of its nuclear program, missile arsenal, or the collapse of its regime. They may resort to using whatever missiles and drones remain to threaten the US presence in the Middle East (some U.S. installations are very close to these groups) and attack Israel, thereby widening the scope of the current war.
Here too, the rational actors inside the Trump administration understand that a mix of unrestrained Iranian retaliation and proxy involvement would almost certainly draw the U.S. into a full-scale military engagement—far beyond B-2 bombers and 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs—into expansive air, sea, and ground operations fraught with grave risks.
The mere possibility of such a vast and dangerous military intervention stands in stark contrast to what Trump promises in his foreign policy: avoiding the depletion of America’s resources and capacities overseas. It also undermines the legitimacy of the “America First” doctrine. A U.S. military intervention in the Israeli-Iranian war would primarily serve Tel Aviv’s interests in the Middle East, not those of Washington, nor of its other allies in the region—Arab or Turkish—who oppose the war, advocate for negotiated solutions and collective security arrangements, and reject Israel’s hegemonic ambitions in a region whose peoples are exhausted by bloodshed and destruction, just as they are by the ongoing historical injustice of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and the accompanying violence, settlement, and displacement.
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