The Trump administration is seemingly allowing itself to be drawn into Israel’s war with Iran, which could become a prolonged and costly conflict in a region of marginal interest to the United States. G7 leaders, including Trump, released a joint statement this week calling for de-escalation in the Middle East. Yet the US President left the summit early before demanding Iran’s unconditional surrender and publicly raising the prospect of assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei. All this raises uncertainty about what the administration will do next.

Should the US intervene, it is likely that one of the military’s initial targets would be the Fordow nuclear facility, which Israel lacks the capability to destroy without American help. It would then be an open question as to whether Trump decides to limit the offensive to airstrikes against nuclear facilities alone, or involve the US even more deeply in the war.

Despite the legacy of his first administration, which tore up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal and pursued a “maximum pressure” policy against Iran, Trump campaigned in 2024 on avoiding new wars, specifically in the Middle East. During his trip to the Gulf last month, he excoriated previous leaders for pursuing regime change in the region. What’s more, key members of his administration seemed determined to shift focus from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific and China. Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff was set to engage in talks with Tehran before Israel’s attack last weekend, while Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard assessed that Iran was not attempting to build a nuclear weapon.

Now, within less than a week, Israel has unilaterally sabotaged Trump’s diplomatic efforts with Tehran and has entangled the United States in a major regional war. While Israel claimed it was acting to disable Iran’s nuclear programme, it was clear early on that it lacked the ability to destroy the enemy’s nuclear facilities and defend against retaliation on its own. Within 48 hours of starting the conflict, Israel was calling on Washington to intervene to hit the Fordow facility with 30,000 lb. “bunker-busters” dropped from American bombers, while the US was already providing air defence and intelligence support.

And yet, demonstrating that the nuclear issue was merely a pretext, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly endorsed the overthrow of the Iranian regime. On Tuesday, Trump called on Truth Social for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” If Trump decides to enter the war directly and Tehran feels its existence is at risk, Iran will not only step up its retaliation against Israel but also against American targets, especially the US service members stationed throughout the region.

If the Iranian regime is toppled, the country will likely fracture into civil war as Iraq and Libya have done previously. After all, there is no credible popular authority to serve as an alternative to the current government. The main choice among hawks in Washington is Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah. Not only is there no evidence of support for Pahlavi among Iranians, but his political dynasty, overthrown in a popular revolution in part because of its dependence on foreign powers, is unlikely to fare better if imposed externally without political legitimacy. Moreover, Pahlavi’s vocal support for Israel’s attack on his own country will do little to endear him to Iranians weathering bombardment from a hated adversary.

As political scientist Robert Pape’s work demonstrates, airstrikes alone will not achieve regime change. If there is no government-in-waiting, the alternative to complete anarchy is a lengthy foreign occupation. The scale of this, and the resistance it will face, is staggering to consider. For example, troop levels during the Iraq War peaked during the surge in late-2007 at 170,000, and even then only temporarily stemmed the disorder unleashed by the invasion.

Iran is nearly four times larger than Iraq, with double the population. It is covered by mountainous terrain that could sustain resistance for decades. Iran also does not meet any of the rare conditions which allow foreign occupations to occasionally succeed, principally the existence of an additional outside threat.

Israel, a country of less than 10 million people, does not have the ability to occupy Iran, nor does it intend to. The number of US troops who would have to be sent to pacify Iran indefinitely would be in the hundreds of thousands — a national effort Americans are neither prepared for nor willing to shoulder. In the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles which helped catalyse Trump’s political rise, it’s hard to imagine the US willingly engaging in an even larger foreign occupation, let alone on behalf of an increasingly defiant and unpopular junior partner.

If Trump is to salvage his policy agenda at home and abroad, Washington needs to tell Israel that there are limits to its support and that an American-led war to overthrow the Iranian regime is a bridge too far. If the administration allows itself to be dragged into a war on another country’s behalf, Trump will always be remembered — no matter what he may say — as a president who put America second.

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Christopher McCallion is a fellow at Defense Priorities.

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