Will the US go to war with Iran? - The Times

President Trump is said to be considering a “fully fledged war” with Iran, having assembled a US armada in the Middle East.

The USS Gerald R Ford, the largest warship ever built, is due to arrive in the Gulf in the coming days, joining the USS Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class carrier which shot down an Iranian drone last month.

Trump appears to have been reviewing battle plans on Wednesday afternoon when he withdrew his support for Sir Keir Starmer’s deal to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

On Friday, when asked if the US could take a limited strike against Iran, the president said: “I guess I can say I am considering that.” A few hours later, he told reporters that Iran “better negotiate a fair deal”.

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In a post on Truth Social he identified Diego Garcia, the US military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and RAF Fairford, the airbase in Gloucestershire, as possible locations from which to attack Iran.

“It may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime,” he wrote. “Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100 Year Lease.”

Eight Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers are already in the Middle East and more than 120 US aircraft have crossed the Atlantic in recent days.

Fighter jets, air-to-air refuellers and spy planes have all been spotted heading towards the region after negotiations in Geneva between the US and Iran failed to deliver any immediate breakthrough. At least one Ohio-class submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles is thought to be positioned to attack Iran.

Trump is now considering a “massive, weeks-long campaign” that would look more like a “fully fledged war”, sources told Axios.

“It would likely be a joint US-Israeli campaign that’s much broader in scope — and more existential for the regime — than the Israeli-led 12-day war last June, which the US eventually joined to take out Iran’s underground nuclear facilities,” the website reported.

Having struck Iran’s nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer last year, the US has demanded that Tehran limit the range of its ballistic missiles and end its support for militias across the Middle East.

More existentially for Tehran, Trump has teased the possibility of regime change, having condemned the killing of thousands of protesters by the Islamic Republic over the new year.

Yet for all the American firepower in the Middle East, Trump is also aware of the perils of military intervention in Iran. As a young man, he watched American voters punish President Carter for a hostage-rescue mission that went wrong in 1980.

The image of burning helicopters in the Great Salt Desert was seared into the president’s mind when he ordered the capture of President Maduro last month. After Maduro was abducted, Trump expressed relief that the Venezuela operation had not been like the “Jimmy Carter disaster that destroyed his entire administration”.

“I don’t know that he would have won the election but he certainly had no chance after that disaster,” he told The New York Times.

Before midterm elections in November, there is significant political risk should an American attack on Iran go wrong. Trump entered the White House with a pledge to put “America first” and his political movement capitalised on voters’ disaffection with “forever wars” in the Middle East.

• Illogical Iranians and erratic Trump slide towards war. Who calls the shots?

Given that the overthrow of the Iranian regime is unlikely to resemble the lightning raid on Caracas, it is unclear whether American voters would tolerate a protracted conflict. “You can’t have another operation like Venezuela, where you send in a team of commandos to snatch the guy and then the whole thing’s over,” said Dr Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East programme at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank.

“If Iran fights back and takes out American military targets and kills Americans, that just creates an extremely unpredictable situation. We don’t know what Trump does in that scenario. The rally around the flag effects tend to happen when your country is attacked out of the blue. It doesn’t necessarily happen if you start the war.”

The Iranian response to last year’s attacks on the Natanz and Fordow nuclear facilities was largely choreographed. Tehran tipped off the US through intermediaries to ensure the confrontation did not spiral into war.

The US was able to withdraw troops from al-Udeid airbase in Qatar and move air defences to the region, meaning the salvo of missiles fired by Iran was easily shot down.

This time many believe the Iranian regime, having very recently displayed ruthlessness towards its own population to ensure its survival, may respond without restraint. Perhaps it will attack the American embassy in Baghdad or the consulate in Erbil use Iraqi-based proxies, close the Strait of Hormuz to throttle the global supply of oil or fire missiles at US bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar.

Within the Trump administration there is concern that the worldwide stock of American air-defence missiles is running low.

“The Iranians have said that they will go all out. They say they’re not going to have a genteel kind of retaliation this time. I don’t think they are bluffing,” said Kelanic.

• The view from Israel on Iran: ‘If the US asks, we will answer’

Yet Trump may believe he is on a winning streak, having overthrown Maduro with relative ease in January. In his 80th year, there are already signs he is beginning to consider his legacy and he may see reversing the Iranian revolution of 1979 as something his future biographers will write about.

With the sheer number of US fighter jets in the Middle East, Trump could flatten buildings associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, perhaps in the hope of fomenting another uprising, and target top Iranian officials with drone strikes or special forces.

Given that Israel largely destroyed Iran’s air defences in 2024, there would be only limited risk to American pilots.

“They could do potentially hundreds of sorties a day because they’ll have several hundred aircraft across the Middle East,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute. “You could lose an aircraft. There might be a lucky hit.”

However, history suggests it is difficult to bomb a regime out of existence. “I literally know of no case where there is genuine regime change by air alone,” Kelanic said.

Immense though it may be, the American armada in the Middle East is perhaps not sufficient for a full invasion. “This is still nowhere near the level of firepower that we had for the First Gulf War or the invasion of Iraq, nowhere near in terms of volume,” Savill said.

It is unclear whether Trump has the appetite to put boots on the ground and depose Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old Iranian supreme leader, in the same way President George W Bush removed Saddam Hussein from Iraq.

The role of Israel will be critical, and any Iranian response in the event of war is likely to include attacks on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Israeli air defences have been able to parry almost all the hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles launched by Iran during previous exchanges of fire. Nevertheless Tehran was still able to damage the Nevatim and Tel Nof air bases.

“People shouldn’t assume that Thaad, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 are an impenetrable shield,” said Savill, referring to American and Israeli air defences.

“It all comes back to, what is the US trying to achieve? Does it believe it’s delivering a sharp blow to compel the regime to accede to its demands elsewhere? Or does it think the regime is brittle enough that there is a regime-change opportunity here? If it is a regime-change operation, that increases the prospects of the Iranians just deciding to fire everything.”

Russia, meanwhile, called for restraint on Thursday as Moscow and Tehran staged naval drills in the Sea of Oman that the Kremlin said were scheduled and should not be a cause for alarm.

“These are planned exercises, and they are agreed upon in advance,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said.

“Russia continues to develop relations with Iran and in doing so, we call on our Iranian friends and all parties in the region to exercise restraint and prudence,” he added.