President Donald Trump has shown a willingness to overthrow foreign leaders not seen since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq more than two decades ago, but he has yet to try to occupy and pacify another country militarily on that scale.
That is why so far, none of Trump’s military actions have spiraled out of control like Iraq did, which raises questions about whether he can continue this pattern in Iran.
It’s the occupation that turns a swift military action into a forever war.
Trump tends to strike decisively and then quit while he is ahead, as evidenced by last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iran, the toppling of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and the bombing of Syria.
During his first term, Trump launched a successful anti-ISIS campaign without essentially reinvading Iraq.
Both that intervention and the Gulf War under George H.W. Bush differed from George W. Bush’s Iraq War by avoiding major military occupations.
The Operation Desert Storm phase of the elder Bush’s war with Iraq lasted just 42 days. The younger Bush’s occupation of Iraq outlasted his presidency.
A major question of the current Iran conflict is whether Trump can avoid another protracted war in the Middle East.
On the one hand, Trump’s ambitions in Iran seem more sweeping than the theatrical targeted strikes that have characterized his use of military force in the past. Trump has never done a regime change war. Even Venezuela’s government was left largely intact after Maduro was removed.
Then again, maybe this will also turn out to be decapitation rather than pure regime change. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested on Monday that while regime change would be nice, U.S. objectives are limited to militarily achievable goals.
“As the president said, he would love for the people of Iran to use this as an opportunity to rise up and remove these leaders. They’ve been wanting to remove them for a long time. We’ve seen successive waves of protests, and we’ve seen them slaughter people, okay?” Rubio told reporters. “But the objective of this mission is to make sure they don’t have these weapons that can threaten us and our allies in the region. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing now.”
“And while we would love to see a new regime, the bottom line is no matter who governs that country a year from now, they’re not going to have these ballistic missiles, and they’re not going to have these drones to threaten us,” he continued. “That’s the objective of this mission: To deny them the ability to use ballistic missiles, to threaten their neighbors, to threaten our bases, to threaten our presence in the region, and ultimately as a shield behind which they can do whatever they want with their nuclear weapons ambition.”
Trump himself has given a time frame of four to five weeks for the current campaign in Iran, though he has said it could go longer or shorter than that.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs],'” Trump told Axios in the hours after the bombing commenced.
Going long and taking over the whole thing has gone badly for Trump’s predecessors who have tried it. In addition to the quagmire in Iraq, Afghanistan reverted to Taliban rule almost immediately following U.S. withdrawal despite a 20-year military presence in the country.
Former President Barack Obama’s “kinetic military action” in Libya also produced chaotic results, but the lack of U.S. military casualties limited the domestic political backlash, though the killings at the consulate in Benghazi became a major scandal.
Critics of Trump’s Iran intervention point to his frequent criticism of endless wars in the Middle East. The White House on Monday night released a list of 74 times Trump said Iran could not be permitted to have a nuclear weapon, dating back to 2011.
HOW THE IRAN CONFLICT WAS LAUNCHED: ‘OPERATION EPIC FURY IS APPROVED. NO ABORTS. GOOD LUCK’
Trump officials such as Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have denied any similarity between what they are doing in Iran and the long war in Iraq.
Time will tell. Trump enters this conflict with a 43.3% job approval rating, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
