On March 7, 2025, Donald Trump announced that he had sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeking to negotiate a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme. “We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” the U.S. President told reporters in the Oval Office. A week later, on March 15, the U.S. launched waves of “pre-emptive” air strikes against Ansar Allah (commonly known as the Houthis) in Yemen. Within two days, Israel resumed its bombing of Gaza, killing over 400 Palestinians in overnight attacks and effectively ending the fragile ceasefire that had been in place since January 19. On March 22, Israel carried out its heaviest air strikes in Lebanon since the November ceasefire, targeting Hezbollah, a key Iranian non-state ally.
After a brief lull, West Asia is once again on fire. The common thread in these developments is unmistakably Iran. While Mr. Trump has reached out to Tehran for nuclear talks, the U.S. and Israel continue to escalate attacks on Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic Republic. “We are down to the final strokes with Iran,” Mr. Trump declared on March 7. In the subsequent days, the U.S. has deployed more fighter jets and its second aircraft carrier to West Asia.
The deal that did not work
For America’s elites, Iran’s nuclear programme — and Iran in general — has remained an unresolved issue for decades. U.S. President Barack Obama sought to address it through diplomacy. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) curtailed Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb, but Israel and the Israel lobby in the U.S. were not happy with the agreement. While the deal restricted Iran’s nuclear programme, it left its nuclear processing capabilities, extensive ballistic missile programme and support for the axis untouched. The JCPOA, which promised to lift economic sanctions on Iran in return for scuttling its nuclear programme, allowed Iran to join the economic and diplomatic mainstream of West Asia, which would invariably leave Iran as a stronger conventional power — an outcome Israel found unacceptable. Mr. Trump, who first took office in 2017, shared the Israeli narrative that the JCPOA was a flawed deal. In May 2018, Mr. Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the agreement and reimposed sanctions on Iran, effectively sabotaging the agreement.
Mr. Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, along with Israel’s covert operations inside Iran, met with Tehran’s ‘maximum resistance’. If Mr. Trump’s plan was to force the Iranians back to the negotiating table, it failed. Instead, Iran stepped up its nuclear programme, enhanced support for the network, particularly the Houthis, and expanded its weapons capabilities. But then the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas in Israel happened.
Following the attack, Israel saw an opportunity to weaken Iran’s forward defence through a mini-regional war. Initially this approach faltered. Israel’s war had two dimensions — one focused on Gaza, and the other targeting Iran. It was Israel that took the war to Iran, first by killing an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general in Syria, and then bombing the Iranian embassy in Damascus. The Iranians retaliated, by directly attacking Israel twice. In Gaza, Israel has killed over 50,000 Palestinians and destroyed much of the enclave, yet, it remains far from achieving its stated goal of “destroying Hamas”. In Lebanon, Israel has degraded Hezbollah’s militant infrastructure and decapitated its leadership, but the high casualties that it suffered and its failure to halt Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, are what ultimately forced it to accept a ceasefire in November 2024. Meanwhile, Iran has significantly expanded its nuclear programme. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran now possesses enough stockpile of 60% enriched uranium to make six nuclear bombs if further enriched to weapons-grade purity (90%).
Changing regional dynamics
But then two key developments happened in November, which Israel thinks have shifted the regional dynamics in its favour, strengthening its position in the war. First, the election of Mr. Trump, who unapologetically supports Israel’s war policies, has given Tel Aviv the confidence to continue its mini-regional war without bothering about external pressure. Second, the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has disrupted Iran’s regional axis. Mr. Assad’s Syria, Iran’s only state ally in West Asia, had served as a crucial land bridge between Iran (through Iraq) and Hezbollah (in Lebanon). Hezbollah’s ability to rebuild itself depends on supplies from Iran. With Mr. Assad gone and a regime of Sunni Islamists that is hostile to the Shia theocratic Iran taking over Damascus, the supply route has been severed. As a result, Hezbollah, Iran’s most prized ally in the axis, will remain weak militarily, which would in turn weaken Iran’s overall deterrence.
This shift is reshaping Israel’s approach to the conflict. Under the November ceasefire with Hezbollah, Israel was expected to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon, but it refused to do so. Likewise, Israel entered into a ceasefire with Hamas in January only to get at least some hostages out, and not to end the war. It has since refused to withdraw troops from Gaza, and resumed bombing the enclave. Mr. Trump’s decision to bomb the Houthis — one pro-Iranian group that remained relatively unscathed — signals that he is fully on board in Israel’s mini-regional war. But for Israel, the fight against militias is not the ultimate goal. The real target is Iran itself. With the axis weakened and the Assad regime gone, Israel thinks that the Iranian regime is more vulnerable today than at any time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The Israelis are tightening the ring of fire around Iran. As Iran faces the heat, Mr. Trump has stepped in with his offer for dialogue.
Shrinking strategic space
While the contents of Mr. Trump’s letter remain undisclosed, his demands (and those of Israel) are no secret. The U.S. wants Iran to give up its nuclear programme, restrict its conventional military capabilities and sever ties with the axis. Iran, however, has only expressed willingness to engage in “indirect talks”, focusing only on the nuclear programme —essentially a return to the 2015 framework. But Mr. Trump wants more.
Iran, which sees itself being surrounded by hostile forces in a violent region, is unlikely to sign on its own surrender, by agreeing to restrictions on its defence industry or cutting ties with the axis. With Iran’s shrinking strategic space, Israel’s growing aggression and the near impossibility of diplomatic common ground between a hostile Trump administration and a wary Iranian regime, the risk of a large-scale military confrontation is today higher than ever.
Yet, war with Iran — even if the axis is decimated — would be catastrophic. Israel has two broad military options, both of which require American involvement. The first is a series of heavy air strikes aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear facilities and military infrastructure. However, given that most of Iran’s nuclear facilities are buried underground —some of them beneath mountains — even a joint U.S.-Israeli operation may fail to eliminate them completely. Even if the facilities are damaged, Iran will still possess the technical know-how to rebuild the programme, and, post-attacks, it will have a greater incentive to develop a nuclear bomb.
The second option is a full-scale regime change war. But unlike in Syria, a country that has been internally destabilised by years of civil war and different armed opposition groups, Iran, despite the occasional mass protests, has no organised, militarised insurgency. So, if the U.S. and Israel want a regime change, they will have to launch an Iraq-style all-out invasion. But Iran, which is a country with centuries of statecraft, ring-fenced by mountains, and with a polarising but deeply entrenched, ideologically motivated regime whose navy has the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil transit choke point, in its sight, is not Iraq. Israel might still want to push the envelope as it sees Iran’s current vulnerabilities as a historic opportunity. But Israel needs its patron, the United States. So, the final question is whether Donald Trump, who came to power campaigning on ending America’s ‘forever wars’, would commit to an all-out war against Iran if his diplomatic push collapses. If his statements and the regional developments are to be taken seriously, he seems inclined to back Israel’s push to reshape West Asia by force.
stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in
Published – April 03, 2025 12:16 am IST
