The Dilemmas of American Action: The Repercussions of an American Strike on Iran

by Eldad Shavit and Jesse Weinberg

Editor’s note: This article was completed and scheduled to be published before the attack on Iran on February 28.

As the latest round of negotiations between Iran and the United States concluded this Tuesday in Geneva, substantial numbers of American troops continued deploying to bases and forward positions across the greater Middle East. The talks followed Donald Trump’s aggressive rhetoric more than forty days earlier, when he openly backed and encouraged Iranian demonstrators after the eruption of widespread anti-regime protests, which were met with a brutal crackdown by Iranian security forces, with reported death tolls reaching into the multiple thousands.

The significant reinforcement of U.S. forces in the region reflects the administration’s reliance on coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran in the face of continued Iranian intransigence. Yet the outcome of the Geneva talks revealed little substantive movement, particularly on Iran’s insistence on its right to enrich uranium on its own soil.

Trump now confronts a dilemma he likely did not anticipate at the height of the Iranian protests, when he declared on Truth Social on January 1 that the United States was “locked and loaded and ready to go.” He has since shifted from maximalist demands regarding the Iranian regime’s response to the protests, to negotiations focused solely on the nuclear issue. The question of whether, and when, to use force against Iran runs directly against his political instincts: an approach that places dealmaking at the center of his foreign policy and is animated by a deep aversion to protracted conflicts.

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