What Trump’s view of US military power could mean for Iran-US talks

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks next to President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, Jan. 29, 2026.

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

London

The negotiations continue in Geneva, at least for now. Yet the sheer scale of the American buildup in the Middle East – the largest since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – certainly makes it look as if President Donald Trump is preparing for war with Iran.

What we’re seeing, however, isn’t necessarily what we’ll get.

And that’s not just because Mr. Trump has been weighing a range of options, diplomatic and military; nor due to reported words of caution from his top general over the potential perils and pitfalls in a full-scale war.

Why We Wrote This

President Donald Trump has rewritten how the United States uses its military power. The new strategy may help explain his approach to Iran as the U.S. builds up firepower in the Middle East.

It’s because of President Trump’s fundamentally redrawn vision of United States military power: his dramatic break with his predecessors over how to wield that power – and what it’s for.

While his often bellicose rhetoric might seem to point toward all-out war, a deeper look into this “Trump Doctrine,” and how it’s been deployed since he returned to the White House a year ago, suggests a more complex picture.

Yes, all-out war could still happen.

But if it does, it’s more likely to be down to miscalculation than intention: the result of an ill-managed, or unmanageable, escalatory spiral between the U.S. and Iran, rather than Mr. Trump’s deliberate choice.

The belligerent tone has been unmistakable. Mr. Trump has rhapsodized about America’s military might. He’s renamed the Department of Defense as the “Department of War.” His secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has stressed the need for a “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military.

Mr. Trump has taken particular delight in celebrating the most powerful and cutting-edge weapons in America’s arsenal: the bunker-busting munitions dropped by U.S. warplanes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June, or the electronic countermeasures that helped special forces arrest and abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last month.

But that’s been part of a political message he clearly views as a key function of U.S. military power. He has used it to drive home his insistence that today’s world belongs to those nations which, to use his phrase of choice, have the most “cards to play.”

And that militarily, no one holds more aces than America.

Still, despite his muscularly worded messaging after the bunker-buster and Maduro attacks – and the large-scale buildup of forces beforehand – both were deliberately limited.

They were sharp, short operations with a finite aim.

And even as U.S.-Iran tensions escalated in recent weeks, the administration offered a timely insight into why that more limited model could appeal to Mr. Trump if he does opt for force.

The insight came in the four-yearly U.S. National Defense Strategy, or NDS, issued late last month by Secretary Hegseth.

It pledged to “restore” a “warrior ethos.” It said the “core, irreplaceable goal” of the armed forces would be to win wars “decisively.”

But the document also outlined what kind of wars it envisaged – implying a strong reluctance to risk full-scale conflict with Iran, in favor of the kind of more limited attack mounted last summer.

And despite Mr. Trump’s social media messages voicing sympathy with anti-government protesters, or musing about the overthrow of Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it was explicit in rejecting such politically motivated military operations.

The NDS almost sneeringly dismissed past presidents’ attempts at “grandiose nation-building,” and their defense of “cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.”

“No longer will the Department be distracted by interventionism, endless war, regime change, and nation building,” the document declared.

How Mr. Trump applies that lens to deciding when, and whether, to use force against Iran remains to be seen.

The NDS’ survey of security concerns did portray Iran as a continuing worry, highlighting its conventional weapons, its apparent determination to keep open the possibility of reviving its nuclear weapons program, and its ties to proxy forces like Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Yet the NDS pointedly omitted any references to the regime’s human rights abuses or its brutal crackdown on protesters.

The NDS also cited the proven willingness and ability of “model ally” Israel to defend itself, with “critical but limited support from the United States.”

And it extolled the success of last year’s joint attack on Iran, culminating in the U.S. airstrike on the bunker-protected nuclear sites – even repeating Mr. Trump’s claim at the time that they had “obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.”

Yet perhaps the most relevant guidepost that the NDS offers is in its concluding section.

In it, Mr. Hegseth portrays America’s war-making, and war-winning, prowess as a way of achieving “peace” terms that secure the “reasonably conceived interests” of the U.S. and its allies. He adds, in a formula likely to be tested in this week’s latest Geneva talks with Iranian officials, that such terms ought to be compatible with “the interests of our potential opponents, if they keep their demands reasonable and cabined.”

If not? Then, the U.S. military will “stand ready to fight and win the nation’s wars.”

Still, the NDS adds an important rider: not just any war at all.

Only “necessary wars” qualify, “in ways that make sense for Americans.”

That may prove to be the bedrock test President Trump applies as he decides what to do with the enormous array of American firepower now massed on Iran’s doorstep.