CNN
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By attacking Tehran’s nuclear program, Donald Trump crossed the fateful threshold and broke through Iran, the Middle East, the US and his own presidency.
Midsummer nights in June 2025 were memorable at the moment when the Middle East changed forever. When the fear of nuclear annihilation was released from Israel; when Iran’s power was castrated and America rose sharply.
But if Trump’s gambling failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program – despite claiming that he “eliminate” it with US airstrikes, a president who often had no obligation could have set the US and the world on a disastrous course. The current risk is that the Iranian regime responds by attacking US troops, targets or civilians in the region, and the conflict escalates into a full-scale war.
Therefore, the President has placed a big bet on global security and his own legacy. He has no way of knowing how the outcome will occur after he lined up the US behind Israel’s attack on Iran.
The president, who has vowed his strength to end the war, appears to have started something else.
On Saturday night, Trump warned Iranian leaders that he would do nothing if he didn’t absorb the American attacks by B-2 bombers at three major nuclear sites.
“Iran, a bully in the Middle East, now has to make peace, or future attacks will be much bigger,” Trump said in a Saturday evening speech at the White House, in which Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President Pete Hegses, Vice President J.D. Vance, was caught in the wings.
The US airstrikes represent a ruthless, unsolicited display of the power of the US military and presidential forces since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and a toxic US relationship with Iran for 45 years.
But starting a new war is easy. It’s much harder to finish them. In particular, in the Middle East, the US president’s tactical assumption that it can contain the fallout of “shock and adoration” military operations is often exposed as tragically naive.
Trump has always opposed the restrictions of presidential forces at home – sent US troops into war without obtaining Congressional consent, properly preparing Americans, and after refusing to join the allies. On Thursday he said he would decide what to do about Iran within two weeks, but in the end he didn’t wait that long to attack.
The president also offered no evidence of his claim that Iran had been away from obtaining nuclear weapons in general to the world or the world for several weeks. And he repeatedly rejected the assessment from his own intellectual community that Iran is still years away from his weapons.
And he has no way of knowing for sure what will come next.
“If someone tells you that you know where this is heading, or what is optimistic (possibility) or the most pessimistic, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Brett McGurk, a senior US official who worked for the Republican and Democratic administrations in the Middle East, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“No one knows,” McGurk said.
The short-term questions now relate to Iran’s ability and willingness to oppose US targets in the Middle East and elsewhere. And despite the declaration of the full success of Trump’s mission, it is unclear whether the US strike has eradicated all Iranian stocks of rich uranium that it may be hidden and could be used to make rudimentary nuclear devices in the future.
The senior US leader never wanted Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But such unknowns were some of the reasons why Trump’s recent predecessor chose not to take the major risk of respect during the Iransan proxy war between two powers, including support for Tehran’s militias that caused the deaths of hundreds of US forces in Iraq.
Administration officials say Trump does not view air strikes on Iran as equivalent to a US attack on Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, Iran is now getting the opportunity to decide how to respond and whether it will involve the US in a new war.
The immediate danger is that even in debilitating state after the Israeli air strikes, Iran can attack US bases, personnel, and even civilians in the Middle East and elsewhere, struggling with bloody fires.
Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is now comprehensively humiliated on the matter – the right to enrich Iran’s self-declared uranium – which is considered the centre of his regime and his country’s fame. It is therefore difficult to imagine that the spiritual leader, the guardians of the revolution, does nothing to respond.
But Trump warns Iran will return to its dangers.
“There is a tragedy in Iran, which is either peace or much larger than we’ve seen over the past eight days. Remember.
Despite the severe deterioration of missile weapons caused by Israeli strikes, and despite the degradation of Hazbollah and Hamas proxies in Lebanon in Gaza, it would have once rained on Israeli missiles in response to Iran’s strikes – Tehran has a choice.
By closing the Strait of Hormuz, an important transport chokepoint for oil exports, we can attempt to create a global energy crisis. You can target Gulf allies. They may attempt to weaponize proxies in Iraq and Syria to attack US troops and bases in the region. Any of these options will inevitably drag the United States into retaliation where it risks causing a full-scale US-Iran war.
The political impact of Trump’s strike within Iran is also unknown.
Some experts wonder if it could lead to a political eruption that threatens the survival of Iran’s revolutionary regime. Israel makes little secret to the fact that its onslaught will cause the downfall of its government that threatened to wipe the Jewish state off the map. However, such a government collapse could lead to an even more hostile and dangerous regime led by elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. If the Iranian state is dissolved, a civil war could break out and dire instability could extend well beyond Iran’s borders. The fear of many Iranians is that humiliating regimes respond by doubling the crackdown on their nation’s people.
The desperate legacy of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan opened up with the success of the epic US military, but later killed and plagued thousands of Americans, dependent on the prospects of US military action.
It took the biggest part of 20 years to find a way out of those conflicts. Successive presidents wanted to divert resources from the Middle East to Asia, and to divert the superpowers, a challenge raised by China.
The Iranian conflict does not need to be transformed into a repetition of those wars. The Middle East has changed at a lightning pace in recent months. Power in the Iranian region was seriously eroded by Israeli military action following Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
But Trump has set the US on a new path with an uncertain end.
He ultimately determined that the risk posed to Israel, the US and the world from a potential Iranian nuclear bomb was more disastrous than a cascade of consequences that could be unleashed by an attempt to stop it.
Trump’s actions only deepen the concerns of critics who believe that Trump grasps the unconstitutional and unidentified powers of opposition to American democracy. After all, the president launched a new conflict when Iran poses no direct threat to the United States. Trump’s record of lies and erosion of the mechanisms of democracy in the US will make it much more difficult to convince the public that he has done the right thing.
Trump also sets precedents for unilateral American actions that potentially infringe international law and the principles of the US-led international system. It can be used by strong people and tyrants everywhere to justify unilateral military action against small countries.
Trump is also testing his position with his ultra-loyal political support.
He now rejects one of his few previous strict political principles – that the era of the US president, who launched a new war in the Middle East based on questionable intelligence, is over. The possibility of a US strike against Iran had already split the Maga movement. That said, Trump has also been consistent for a long time, not allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb.
However, the US attack on Iran’s nuclear power plants represents a major victory for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been seeking military eradication of the site for decades. Netanyahu effectively launched a war with Iran more than a week ago when he knew Israel would not be over due to the lack of bombs that destroy the bunkers that the US used on Saturday night. He rightly bets that after Israel invalidates Iran’s air defense, Trump will take the opportunity to completely wipe out Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump’s decision to attack Iran has caused an immediate political storm in the United States.
A senior Republican from Capitol Hill immediately offered his support. House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer praised Trump in a statement.
“Military operations in Iran should serve as a clear reminder to the enemy and allies that President Trump means what he says,” Johnson said.
But top Democrats accused him of breaking the law, violating the constitution and plunging the United States into a new Middle East conflict.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Selection Committee on Intelligence Report — like other Democrats, who were not informed before the strike — has denounced Iran’s decision to strike.