How Trump’s biggest bet yet could define his presidency

Sunday, 1 March 2026

ANALYSIS: Donald Trump had been mulling military action in Iran for weeks before he decided to pull the trigger. But even on Friday, the US president was keen to keep everyone guessing, knocking back questions from reporters on the Iran-US negotiations as he toured Texas on a domestic visit. When he arrived in Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, it was time to get going — the president monitored the attack overnight with members of his national security team from his Palm Beach residence. Back in DC, JD Vance watched from the Situation Room along with Scott Bessent and Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump has long held the view that US foreign policy risks being too predictable, criticising past presidents for announcing their red lines and boxing themselves in. He told the New York Times in 2016: “Would I go to war? Look, let me just tell you. There’s a question I wouldn’t want to answer … I don’t want to say what I’d do because, again, we need unpredictability. You know, if I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’ve said I would or I wouldn’t. I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking.”

But last week he could not help giving hints. He told one journalist to expect an interesting two weeks. Sending 16 warships to the region also more than hinted to the world what might be afoot.

Airbases were evacuated while JD Vance — the cabinet’s chief dove and isolationist — was sent out to give an interview in which he said that, even if there were strikes (he said they remained “under consideration”), there was “no chance” they would result in the United States becoming involved in a years-long, drawn-out war.

This started to make figures in the Maga movement a little twitchy. It felt like a preamble to a move that would be questioned by a voter base that has long railed against “foreign wars”. While campaigning for a second term, Trump purred proudly that he was “the first president in decades who started no new wars” and complained bitterly when he was not given the Nobel Peace Prize.

He now has a new tune. In his defence of his decision — via a video message posted on Truth Social, wearing a trademark USA cap — he boasted that he was going to help where other predecessors had failed.

“For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond.”

Later, the president announced that the supreme leader, Khamenei, was dead, along with a number of senior members of the regime. Administration officials say there were indications that the Iranians were planning to pre-emptively strike US bases, leading Trump to decide to go first against “the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror”.

While this is undoubtedly more interventionist than many of the president’s voters and Maga base had anticipated, it remains different from previous interventions by US presidents — even if Democratic senator Andy Kim likened Trump’s decision to the “same dangerous and foolish decision President [George] Bush did a generation ago”. Old-time Republicans, stung by past Maga criticism, are asking: who’s the neocon now?

It is certainly the case that Trump’s call for “regime change” in Iran will send shivers down the spine of many in Maga. Already, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who visited the White House last week — has told a reporter that the attack on Iran is “disgusting and evil”.

But Trump is attempting to effect regime change from a distance. The US and Israel will carry out the strikes; Trump’s message was that it will be up to the Iranian people to do the rest.

Will it actually work? Many details seem yet to be ironed out. Before the US strike on Iran, figures close to the administration voiced concern that the mission in Venezuela that kickstarted the year may be informing the president’s thinking, yet there are crucial differences. In Venezuela, it may be possible to install a puppet leader to act in the best interests of the US. But there is not exactly a friendly deputy ayatollah to put a gloss on things — or to be won over.

Even so, Trump said on Saturday of the ayatollah’s replacement that he did not know who it might be, “but at some point they’ll be calling me to ask who I’d like”.

And this is, explicitly, a call for regime change. Figures in the administration have some links to Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince of Iran and eldest son of the last shah, who is seen as the most likely leader, but there has been no mention of him, at the time of writing, from US officials.

All this comes at a time when senior figures in the White House are trying to pull the focus back to the domestic agenda. They take the view that voters are not picking up the full story on the economy and the direction it is moving in, with international affairs often dominating the news agenda.

Aides were pleased with the State of the Union address in which Trump hammered home messages on the economy and immigration. He boasted in that speech that he had stopped eight wars in ten months. He is now on his second act of war in two months — and this is being seen as a war of his choosing.

An escalating conflict with Iran is going to further dominate the agenda — drowning out other issues and potentially playing havoc with world energy prices. As for the likely reaction of the US public, recent polling by YouGov before the strikes found deep concern among Americans over US military action against Iran, with about half (49 per cent) opposed.

Operation Epic Fury, as it has been called, is, according to his team, another example of Trump’s “peace through strength” approach — a cause without an endgame that the administration is hoping many Americans can get behind.

Certainly many Americans — and others around the world — will celebrate the passing of the Iranian leader. Trump’s admission, too, that there could be deaths of military personnel speaks to the risks, even if there are no boots yet directly on the ground.

The fear is that, for all the talk of leaving it to the Iranians, this is the beginning of a very messy conflict that might eventually require America to step in again. Figures like John McCain, mocked by Trump as the embodiment of Republican interventionism, used to attract the base’s fury for their hawkish talk on Iran and beyond. Trump was elected as the antidote. Many will now start to ask if he is becoming what he promised to replace.

If this succeeds — crippling Iran’s capabilities without dragging America into another open-ended war — Trump will claim vindication. He will argue that he has forged a third way between neocon nation-building and isolationist retreat: overwhelming force, tightly scoped, swiftly concluded. That would fit his self-image as a president who restores deterrence without surrendering control.

If it unravels, the political cost will be profound. Casualties, escalation or economic mayhem would test a political base elected on disparaging neocons and promises of restraint. This is his largest bet yet and may come to define his presidency — for better or worse.