What is Trump's plan for Iran? How his objectives keep changing - The Times

The Trump administration’s shifting attempts to set out America’s objectives in Iran and explain the spark that triggered the attack are causing growing anger among prominent supporters of the president.

Trump initially urged regime change and has set out four military objectives, while the vice-president JD Vance focused on one of them — ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions — and called the fate of the Iranian regime “incidental”.

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, triggered an outcry from the Maga base when he said on Monday that an “imminent” threat arose to the US because Israel was preparing to attack Iran, meaning America would be targeted by Iranian reprisals, and so the US had to strike first.

Trump rejected this characterisation in the Oval Office on Tuesday when asked pointedly if Israel had forced his hand.

“No, I might have forced their hand,” Trump replied. “You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first … I felt strongly about that.”

In the first days of Operation Epic Fury, Trump and senior administration figures have also presented a number of scenarios for how long the operation could last as well as the objectives behind it.

On Saturday in a video posted on Truth Social, Trump said the objective was “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”.

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He listed four aims: to “destroy [Iran’s] missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground”, “annihilate their navy”, “ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilise the region or the world” and “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon”.

He went further, telling the Iranian people: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

When Trump spoke to Axios that afternoon he mooted several scenarios, as if no final decision had been made.

He could “go long and take over the whole thing”, he suggested, “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 programmes]’.”

Trump gave a flurry of interviews on Sunday with competing accounts of whether regime change was his aim.

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The president was noncommittal with The Atlantic on supporting the Iranian people against the regime. “I have to look at the situation at the time it happens, Michael. You can’t give an answer to that question,” he said.

He also said the operation could last weeks. “We always thought it was a four-to-five-week deal,” he said.

Speaking to The New York Times, he suggested an outcome similar to that seen in Venezuela, where only President Maduro was removed but the regime remained intact.

In a video posted to Truth Social on Sunday afternoon, when he again told Iranians to “take back your country”, he was unclear about the nature of support they could expect from the US. America is with you. I made a promise to you and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help,” he said.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator for South Carolina, told NBC the objective was not regime change after all. “The goal of this operation is to change the threat, not the regime,” he said.

On Monday several administration figures set out explanations. Trump said the US’s aims were to destroy Iran’s military capabilities, “annihilate” its navy, prevent the regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon and ensure it “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders”.

Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war, said: “This is not a so-called regime-change war but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it.”

Trump campaigned on “no new wars” and Matt Walsh, a right-wing podcast host, posted his frustration: “I can’t take the gaslighting, guys. I really can’t. Conservatives are now running around saying ‘Iran has been waging war on us for 47 years.’ Okay then why didn’t any of you call for an attack on Iran at any point until now?”

Rubio said the “hardest hits are yet to come”, which was echoed by Trump. This recalled his threat to Venezuela of a second wave of attacks, seen as a successful tactic, leading the regime to co-operate to save itself.

Rubio insisted “there absolutely was an imminent threat” from Iran. “The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us.

“We were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded … If we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked, and by someone else — Israel attacked them — they hit us first, and we waited for them to hit us, we would suffer more casualties and more deaths.

“We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.”

There were already suspicions about the role of Binyamin Netanyahu, fuelled when the Israeli prime minister posted a photo of a phone call with Trump showing Allies at War by Tim Bouverie on his desk. The book recounts how Winston Churchill manoeuvred to bring the US into the Second World War.

Anger within Maga exploded after Rubio’s explanation for the US strike.

“My own feeling is no one should have to die for a foreign country,” said Megyn Kelly, a usually pro-Trump podcast host. She referred to the first four known US deaths at the time. “I don’t think those four service members died for the United States, I think they died for Iran or for Israel.”

US presidents usually explain their thinking on taking the country to war in a primetime address to voters, but Trump instead spent the first three days of the war making brief comments directly to more than a dozen media outlets, giving varying accounts of his strategy.

One reason for the absence of a TV presentation may be that it could be compared with his most recent such address in December, when he told Americans that “I’ve … destroyed the Iran nuclear threat and ended the war in Gaza, bringing for the first time in 3,000 years peace to the Middle East”.