Trump was advised of the daunting prospects of regime change, The Wall Street Journal reported, even after repeatedly saying the U.S. would support what some labeled a new Iranian revolution. Now critics fear for the future of protesters who had been emboldened by Trump’s call to action.
“He put American credibility on the line,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “There will be, and already has been, a sense of betrayal and backlash from Iranians that will last well beyond the life of this presidency.”
“Iran brought down the iron fist with speed and ferocity we haven’t seen before,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. The regime may have had a “perverse incentive” to quash the movement even more quickly and brutally before the U.S. was prepared to bomb Iran, he said.
Iranian diplomats during the week tried to persuade the U.S. not to strike their country, and to resume nuclear talks instead. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reached out hoping to set up a meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in the Swiss resort of Davos before the start of next week’s World Economic Forum, Arab and European officials said. The meeting was never finalized.
On Tuesday, Trump was scheduled to meet with top officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine, to review some plans, but he skipped the session and detailed his thoughts once more on social media.
On Tuesday evening, Trump was leaning toward ordering an attack and directed the Pentagon to prepare for a strike on Iran, the U.S. officials said. U.S. military officials went to bed that night expecting the president to give the final order for an attack the next day. Early Wednesday, the U.S. military evacuated some personnel from Al Udeid air base, in Qatar, home to U.S. aircraft and the major U.S. air war command center in the region.
But Trump was hearing alternate points of view. The U.S. couldn’t be sure of toppling the regime with a quick flurry of airstrikes alone, the U.S. officials said, and it was unclear that bombing Iranian military and civilian sites would help the uprising and weaken the government. The U.S. also didn’t have the requisite military assets in the region to both launch a large and sustained attack that could put the regime on its heels and protect American forces and allies in the Middle East, aides told the president.
Officials in Israel and Arab countries also told Washington the time wasn’t right for a strike, U.S. officials said. The situation in Iran was too volatile, the Middle Eastern leaders said, and the protests had already been largely subdued by the regime’s heavy-handed crackdown. Plus, it was unclear who would lead the opposition if somehow Tehran’s government crumbled under U.S. air power.
Iran’s national security adviser Ali Larijani and other officials lobbied regional nations, including Gulf monarchies, Iraq and Turkey, to pressure Trump to stand down on Wednesday, according to Arab officials. In a string of “bullet points,” the Iranian officials said Persian Gulf nations such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia would face retaliation on the American bases they host if Iran was attacked, the Arab officials said.
WSJ article.
